Assessing team learning practices in project/ design based learning approach

Team learning is considered as a constructive way for enhancing students learning in collaborative environment. It involves interaction between students through peer-to-peer learning, which makes students to be problem solver, an excellent communicator, a good reviewer and a manager. The School of Engineering at Xxx University practices project/design based learning as one of its learning and teaching approach. The project/design based learning process helps students to be self directed leaners which enhances the student learning outcomes towards attaining graduate career expected skills. An Overarching goal of this study is assessing the team learning experiences of cohort of students from third year civil undergraduate engineering in a project/design based learning approach at Xxx University. From the students’ experiences and views, this study will investigate and visualize the students choice of a unique team learning practice which enhances their learning outcomes in project/design based curriculum.

Learning cultures of problem-based learning teams

The learning experiences of first-year engineering students to a newly implemented engineering problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum is reported here, with an emphasis on student approaches to learning. Ethnographic approaches were used for data collection and analysis. This study found that student learning in a PBL team in this setting was mainly influenced by the attitudes, behaviour and learning approaches of the student members in that team. Three different learning cultures that emerged from the analysis of eight PBL teams are reported here. They are the finishing culture, the performing culture and the collaborative learning culture. It was found that the team that used a collaborative approach to learning benefited the most in this PBL setting. Students in this team approached learning at a deep level. The findings of this study imply that students in a problem-based, or project-based, learning setting may not automatically adopt a collaborative learning culture. Hence, it is important for institutions and teachers to identify and consider the factors that influence student learning in their particular setting, provide students with necessary tools and ongoing coaching to nurture deep learning approaches in PBL teams.

Monitoring the communication competence in an innovative context of project management learning

This document presents an innovative, formal educational initiative that is aimed at enhancing the development of engineering students' specific competences. The subject of project management is the common theoretical and practical framework that articulates an experience that is carried out by multidisciplinary groups. Full utilization of Web 2.0 platforms and Project Based Learning constitutes the applied methodology. More specifically, this study focuses on monitoring communication competence when working in virtual environments, providing an ad-hoc rubric as a final result.

Cooperative Learning vs. Project Base Learning.

The Bologna Declaration and the implementation of the European Higher Education Area are promoting the use of active learning methodologies such as cooperative learning and project based learning. This study was motivated by the comparison of the results obtained after applying Cooperative Learning (CL) and Project Based Learning (PBL) to a subject of Computer Engineering. The fundamental hypothesis tested was whether the academic success achieved by the students of the first years was higher when CL was applied than in those cases to which PBL was applied. A practical case, by means of which the effectiveness of CL and PBL are compared, is presented in this work. This study has been carried out at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, where these mechanisms have been applied to the Operating Systems I subject from the Technical Engineering in Computer Systems degree (OSIS) and to the same subject from the Technical Engineering in Computer Management degree (OSIM). Both subjects have the same syllabus, are taught in the same year and semester and share also formative objectives. From this study we can conclude that students¿ academic performance (regarding the grades given) is greater with PBL than with CL. To be more specific, the difference is between 0.5 and 1 point for the individual tests. For the group tests, this difference is between 2.5 and 3 points. Therefore, this study refutes the fundamental hypothesis formulated at the beginning. Some of the possible interpretations of these results are referred to in this study.

A research agenda for design-based learning in engineering education

It is often argued that ‘design’ is an (perhaps the) essential characteristic of engineering practice; that, “Design requires unique knowledge, skills, and attitudes common to all engineering disciplines, and it is these attributes that distinguish engineering as a profession.” Hence, it is not surprising to see engineering design identified as a key element of engineering education. There are a range of pedagogical models described, badged with a range of names, that are suggested as approaches to teaching engineering design, for example: project-based learning, problem-based learning, design-based learning, conceive-design-implement-operate (CDIO), problem-oriented project-based learning, social design based learning and project-oriented, design-based learning. While significant literature on engineering design education generally exists, many authors note open questions regarding optimal pedagogical approaches, and opportunities for further evaluation and research. In this paper we draw on literature about design education and DBL in engineering education, and synthesise themes that present a potential research agenda for those educators involved in DBL in engineering education.A search of the research literature was conducted using terms related to DBL in engineering education, including ‘Engineering Design’, ‘Design Education’, ‘Engineering + Project Based Learning’, ‘Engineering + Problem Based Learning’ and ‘Engineering + Design Based Learning’. The literature thus collected was expanded by inspecting the lists of references in the initially identified literature set for further potentially relevant literature. This process was repeated until no further related literature was identified, and resulted in 124 items. All collected literature was carefully reviewed for explicitly identified suggestions for future research. The authors also considered the literature set as a whole to identify additional research possibilities implied by aspects of DBL practice commonly addressed weakly, or not at all, in the available published research. From the results of this review, a set of themes was synthesised by grouping related research recommendations and possibilities. In the following section the identified research themes are presented and, for each, a summary of the supporting literature is given and a central research question is formulated by the authors.

A text analytics evaluation of a first-year engineering project-based unit

In the undergraduate engineering program at Griffith University in Australia, the unit 1006ENG Design and Professional Skills aims to provide an introduction to engineering design and professional practice through a project-based learning (PBL) approach to problem solving. It provides students with an experience of PBL in the first-year of their programme. The unit comprises an underpinning lecture series, design work including group project activities, an individual computer-aided drawing exercise/s and an oral presentation. Griffith University employs a ‘Student Experience of Course’ (SEC) online survey as part of its student evaluation of teaching, quality improvement and staff performance management processes. As well as numerical response scale items, it includes the following two questions inviting open-ended text responses from students: i) What did you find particularly good about this course? and ii) How could this course be improved? The collection of textual data in in student surveys is commonplace, due to the rich descriptions of respondent experiences they can provide at relatively low cost. However, historically these data have been underutilised because they are time consuming to analyse manually, and there has been a lack of automated tools to exploit such data efficiently. Text analytics approaches offer analysis methods that result in visual representations of comment data that highlight key individual themes in these data and the relationships between those themes. We present a text analytics-based evaluation of the SEC open-ended comments received in the first two years of offer of the PBL unit 1006ENG. We discuss the results obtained in detail. The method developed and documented here is a practical and useful approach to analysing/visualising open-ended comment data that could be applied by others with similar comment data sets.

A problem-based learning project supported by the internet

This case study looks at how bank sites with interactive calculators can be used to enhance directed investigations of students in a Mathematics Studies course. In the course of these investigations, students access simulated contexts which enabled them to have a feel of how they would spend money in the real world. This case study reveals the confidence of students in carrying out searches and transferring data, learning about bank calculators and their role in real life, how hidden costs are incorporated into loans and being able to validate what is presented in these calculators with their own calculations. This case study also highlights the perceptions of the teacher regarding this strategy in teaching this topic and the areas that need improvement. This paper analyses what has happened in the teaching and learning process and endeavours to shed some light into how the Internet can be used to promote a quality mathematics education.

Employers' perspectives on work-integrated learning in project-based workplaces

The property and construction industry is uniquely impacted by project-based work environments; this creates special challenges for collaborative education. This research is based on investigating the attitudes of employer’s towards the use of formally assessed internships. The study comprised two stages; firstly a series of pilot interviews were undertaken with employers to test a number known issues. Secondly, the results from the interviews were used to refine a set of questions that were put to a large focus group of employers who were invited from across the property and construction sector. The results showed that many organisations expressed considerable goodwill towards collaborative education with universities. However, the challenges caused by project-based work environments restricted their ability to provide comprehensive learning opportunities. This research focuses on the distinctive issues associated with work-integrated learning in the property and construction industry

Project oriented design based learning – staff perspectives

The focus of this paper is to get staff perception on design based learning in their respective disciplines and how they could be aligned to the newly proposed model, in project oriented design based learning (PODBL). In academia, students and staff are supposed to work together in order to achieve a balanced learning and teaching process. By using different teaching and learning approaches, teachers are aware of escalating the student knowledge to fulfill current technology needs. This paper is part of a continuing process of a research project, which analyses better teaching and learning approaches in engineering. As part of this research, face-to-face interviews with staff members of the school of engineering in Deakin University who are teaching engineering design were conducted. The interview questions are based on
qualitative analysis. The questions covered here are designed to determine the staff level of experience from teaching engineering using design based learning approach as an educational model. From the analysed results, this research encourages the school to practice a unique pedagogy that will accomplish the students learning outcomes.