This article describes the students’ outcomes of the service-learning project. Students in Interior Design program participated with the community partner to calculate and assess building energy and suggested solutions to help reduce building energy via this valuable project that students and the community were able to give and receive help from each other. By applying the knowledge to the community, students had a better opportunity to measure and assess building energy. In the previous studies, Interior Design students suffer difficulties with the energy concept and green building design as well as the students and educators have not sufficiently communicated for energy-related concepts (Goldring & Osborne, 1994; Ruff & Olson, 2009). Many students have knowledge of sustainable methods and products to design residential and commercial projects (Ruff & Olson, 2009). Still, they are not aware much of how energy works in the built environment. In addition, the instruction with examples of sustainable projects is not sufficient to teach energy-related concepts to the students (McKeown, Hopkins, Rizi, & Chrystalbridge, 2002). This limitation may result in Interior Design students not being able to perform properly environmentally friendly design in green building projects.
Most of the buildings in the community need proper insulation, sustainable materials, and more sealed windows and doors to reduce energy consumption. Through a relationship with our community partner, students tried to solve a community challenge of building energy. Students provided analytical reports of actual buildings that suggest more efficient energy-saving ideas to benefit current and future stakeholders in the community. This project aims to (i) elucidate the process of energy analysis in residential settings: Students’ activities in a classroom and at the designated homes, (ii) describe the students’ outcome via this service-learning project, and (iii) mention the students’ evaluation after the class.
