I have taught my first project based learning (PBL) design course this semester to fourth year civil engineering students. I wonder if any educator here would like to share her/his experience so that we exchange thoughts.
Let me offer an interesting question or problem I have assigned in engineering physics. They have now met the drag equation. I tell them that someone in marketing asks if you can plant fish in the remote mountain lakes from an airplane. Currently they are packing them in milk cans on mules, and it takes overnight. They lose more than 70% of the fish before they arrive.
If you approve, they have some money to develop a project. They add that they have heard that humans, and perhaps animals, experience concussions when their brains feel accelerations of 90g's.
They have given you an hour to reply whether this is worth investing some money and working out a proposal. But they want to see your justifications well supported.
You could ask them to design a dam . They would have to create a model and do a presentation as well.
It could be either an individual project or a group project.
Actually in my model, I asked the students to identify a real-life problem that enabled achieving the course learning outcomes when completed.
My experience is within secondary (age 14-16) Design and Technology and Engineering subjects. I have been keen to promote the benefits of PBL for two key reasons. Firstly the approach applies understandings derived from the procedures attached to problem solving in applied skills subjects such as engineering (see McCormick (1997) for a good discussion of relevant knowledge types). There is much to know when problem solving/designing which does not become apparent until the procedures of designing, modelling and testing are engaged.
Secondly, PBL encourages and draws from an individual's dispositional characteristics such as learning resilience and innovation. I believe these to be extremely useful as supports for learning and as indicators of potential success in applied skills subjects. Engineering Habits of Mind (Lucas, Hanson and Claxton, 2014) for example provide specific characteristics considered to be important for success in engineering related learning and in the wider world of employment. In my view these are most appropriately developed via PBL activities, because PBL relates more closely to solving problems in real-world contexts.
The following may be of interest:
McCormick, R. (1997) Conceptual and procedural knowledge, Internal Journal of Technology and Design Education, 7, 141-159.
Lucas, B., Hanson, J. & Claxton, G. (2014) Thinking like an engineer: Implications for the education system, Royal Academy of Engineering. Available from www.raeng.org.uk/thinkinglikeanengineer.
I have several years working ABP with my students, but they are from the first year of science and engineering. I believe that there are two very important things: the formation of groups of students from the first day of class and whatever the problem or situation to consider challenging for them.
I have found my most important "priming" which I need to do early in the term is to begin with the Socratic Inquiry based materials called Tutorials in Introductory Physics on the first day possible. This sets the expectation that we are going to get personal about talking about each of our own individual thinking.
Our Civil Engineering programme started since last year a fully PBL curriculum. Each semester we collaborate with real clients (Municipalities, companies, etc.) who provide a real complex problem to solve. Students must develop an innovative solution and to present it in various phases to clients and lecturers. All the theoretical knowledge provided is used within the project. The design approach is based on research principles. We have a very positive experience so far. Students are very involved and they seem developing a deeper understanding of the topics when they apply them to real case studies. We measured also a substantial increase in their satisfaction towards our study programme. Without any doubt, the PBL curriculum is working for us.
The Tutorials experience I earlier referred to is considered to be a modified form of Guided Socratic Inquiry. In some quarters they are excited about hands-on experiences. However, if they are not also brains-on, we run the risk of being fun, but having little impact. For example, Erik Mazur (Harvard, ConceptTest author) recounts how his students could mathematically predict the current through each branch of a circuit, but were completely stumped or wrong when asked qualitatively ranking the brightness of identical bulbs in a multi-branched circuit.
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