How to motivate university students who are new to project-based learning and who have been in a lecture-based learning throughout their entire education.
It is important to inform the students about the advantages and process of PBL before starting the sessions. Let the students know that PBL is actually the approach through which the students will be able to learn the application of theoretical knowledge, which is similar to what they are going to face in their practical/ professional life. Tell them that this will help them develop the competencies required in the real world. Generally students are more motivated to learn something when it is related to their future professions.
I would guess that the student are not so devoted to lecture-based teaching, and motivated by it, as we may think, they are accommodated to it and some perhaps are unwilling to take on something that demands more constant and complex engagement from their side. But if the PBL is well constructed, they will have a lot more fun after a while, but more work, more to think about. They are now driving the learning vehicle, not sitting in a teaching bus.
Note that this shift is not just an easy shift of methods. It is grounded in very different pedagogical thinking than purely lecture-based instruction (...for which I think Freire’s criticism of ”the banking model of education” is highly relevant.) For PBL, I see constructionism as the most constructive background theory. The knowledge of the maker as preferable to the platonic knowledge of the spectator.
I motivated the students to learn the programming language through the project-based learning. Students find very interesting to solve the real time problem. PBL gives an experience in understanding programming language in depth.
To motivate students to take up PBL, we demonstrated working real-time application to them. Students who all are interested in coding, we have made "coders club". In coders club, the existing project with senior student mentors are assigned to newly joined students. Senior student mentors help the newly joined students to work on assigned project module. weekly 3 hours we provide technical training to the students apart from lecture series. In this way, we have motivated the newly joined students to take up project-based learning. We have nearly 12 students in a team to work on Learning Analytics project.
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