Integrating Sustainability and Ethical Responsibility into Building Water Supply and Drainage Engineering Education: A CDIO-Based Curriculum Reform

Engineering education faces growing demands to prepare graduates capable of addressing complex sustainability challenges, public safety concerns, and ethical responsibilities. However, sustainability and ethical education are often delivered as supplementary content, limiting their integration with core engineering instruction. This study examines and evaluates a curriculum reform of a Building Water Supply and Drainage Engineering course that systematically integrates sustainability, ethical responsibility, and human-centered values into technical teaching through a CDIO-oriented approach. A quasi-experimental pre–post design was employed with a full cohort of 100 undergraduate engineering students. Data were collected using a sustainability-oriented questionnaire, project-based assessment rubrics, and student reflection reports. Quantitative data were analyzed using paired-sample t-tests and effect size calculations, while qualitative data were thematically coded to support interpretation of the results. The findings demonstrate statistically significant and practically meaningful improvements in students’ sustainability awareness, ethical responsibility, human-centered design thinking, and systems thinking. Project assessment results further reveal students’ ability to apply sustainability principles and ethical considerations in engineering design tasks. These results provide empirical evidence that value integration within core engineering courses enhances both technical competence and professional responsibility. This study contributes empirical evidence to Education for Sustainable Development in engineering education by demonstrating a transferable pedagogical model that embeds sustainability and ethics into discipline-specific engineering instruction without increasing curricular load.