Background: Developing self-directed learning (SDL) skills in engineering students is critical to support life-long learning. This research was conducted at Iron Range Engineering (IRE), an innovative, problem-based learning (PBL) engineering program, which has suffused the concept of metacognition throughout its curriculum. Purpose/Hypotheses:…

Future global challenges that engineering graduates face have placed demands on engineering education and how graduates develop competency in collaborative problem-solving. Such demand has seen an increase in the use of pedagogies like problem-based learning (PBL) that provide opportunities for developing collaborative problem-solving skills. PBL…

Background: This study investigated the development of engineering students' approaches to learning and views on collaboration in a PBL environment. Material and methods: An explanatory mixed research approach was employed with participants from four PBL-implementing engineering courses in Qatar and China. 197 students responded to two surveys,…

Traditional teaching approaches are generally teacher-directed, where students are taught in a manner that is conducive to sitting and listening. It is often argued that these approaches may not provide students with valuable learning skills, and rather that non-traditional approaches to teaching and learning might better endow students with such…

This paper aims to study ways of contributing to the development of Calculus through a Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach, which involves students in their first semester of the Integrated Master's program in Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) at the University of Minho. The study presents the analysis of forty-two interdisciplinary…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the use of problem-based learning (PBL) with engineering students at a technical university in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach: The setting provided a unique opportunity to evaluate the impact of PBL, since Universiti Kuala Lumpur offers both the traditional, predominantly…

This paper describes a non-classical logic course primarily indicated for graduate students in electrical engineering and energy engineering. The content of this course is based on the vision that it is not enough for a student to indefinitely accumulate knowledge; it is necessary to explore all the occasions to update, deepen, and enrich that…

Project-Based Learning (PBL) has been implemented in the first year of the Industrial Engineering and Management programme at the University of Minho, Portugal, since 2004/2005. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and discuss teachers' experiences in PBL in this programme and to explore its implications for student learning and for teaching…

This paper reports outcomes of a study focused on discovering qualitatively different ways students experience problem-based learning in virtual space. A well-accepted and documented qualitative research method was adopted for this study. Five qualitatively different conceptions are described, each revealing characteristics of increasingly complex…

Design-based learning (DBL) is an educational approach grounded in the processes of inquiry and reasoning towards generating innovative artifacts, systems and solutions. The approach is well characterized in the context of learning natural sciences in secondary education. Less is known, however, of its characteristics in the context of higher…

This study investigates the relationship between student influence and academic self-efficacy in a sample of 275 students in two Master's programmes in Engineering. Students in only one of the programmes studied according to problem-based learning (PBL). Results indicate that students choosing strategies to influence course content or structure,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between student influence, students' strategic approaches to studying and academic achievement, and to examine differences between students in a Master's programme in Engineering with conventional teaching and one based on problem-based learning in a sample of 268 students. A version of…

Problem-based learning has been at the core of significant developments in engineering education in recent years. This term refers to any learning environment in which the problem drives the learning, because it is posed in such a way that students realize they need to acquire new knowledge before the problem can be solved. This paper presents the…

This work reports on the results obtained from the application of learning environments on the basis of one integrative problem and a series of other smaller problems that limit the contents to be investigated and learned by the students. This methodology, which is a variation to traditional problem-based learning approaches, is here illustrated…

Since the publication of the Standards for Technological Literacy in 2000 (ITEA), there have been a number of new programs developed that are designed to teach pre-engineering. Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is one such program. Project Lead the Way boasts serving over 1250 schools in 44 states and teaching over 160,000 students. Another program is…