Integrating Generative AI into Sustainability Education:The Lorax as a Case Study

Engineering education has continually adapted to technological advancements, using emerging tools to enhance learning. A new potential rises with the advent of generative AI tools, which necessitates an exploration of their role in educa- tion – with a special focus on sustainability. This study investigates the potential role of generative AI in sustainability education, through a case study involv- ing student critique of a ChatGPT-generated essay on Dr. Suess’s “The Lorax”. Specifically, students in a sustainability engineering class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, were tasked to reflect on questions regarding the use and experience with generative AI tools during their coursework. The analysis focus- ing on sentiment and topic discovering, reveals a general positive sentiment from students towards those tools. Students found merit in AI’s ability to personalize learning, generate ideas, help in writing and coding, and reducing time of differ- ent tasks. Negative sentiment was mostly influenced by shallow reasoning of the tool and confusion around its output. This suggests that generative AI may be a useful tool in sustainability education, but not without caveats.