Ten Years of Positive Feedback on Project-Based Learning From First-Year Engineering Students’ Perspective

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a student-centered method of teaching and learning and, since its beginning several schools (of varying degrees of education) have implemented, in different ways, having as common strands that the student learns in teams, and being challenged in the context of a case-scenario.

In Portugal, a PBL methodology has been implemented, in the first year of an Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) program, for more than 15 years. This represents a total number of IEM enrolled students in PBL well above seven hundreds during the reported timeframe. A continuous improvement process of the PBL activities was relentlessly pursued during such period. Even though some improvements have been made, it remains the case that, occasionally, strategies that aim to improve some activities, unintentionally, lead others to become modest or even get worse.

Grounded on end-of-term on-line PBL process satisfaction questionnaires, as well as on results of each PBL edition final workshops, this paper studies and reports on a number of such shortcomings. The online questionnaire is available at the end of each semester with the purpose of acquiring students’ perceptions regarding the PBL running and effectiveness. The questionnaire is anonymously answered and on a voluntary basis. Although the questionnaire suffered small adaptions throughout the years, it is basically divided into six main dimensions: 1) Project theme; 2) Learning and skills development; 3) Teamwork; 4) Teachers role; 5) Assessment model and 6) PBL as teaching/learning methodology. In turn, the final workshop, which is promoted by the PBL coordination team, has two main purposes: (1) to present the preliminary results of the online questionnaire, and (2) to promote debate among students, teachers and tutors, relating various aspects of the developments and semester results (e.g. project theme, assessment model, peer assessment, teamwork, teachers and tutors roles, learning, skills and knowledge acquired, among others).

This paper presents the analysis of the results of ten academic years PBL evaluation process, grounded on the compiled results obtained from 2009-10 to 2019-20. Also, a synthesis of the effective findings (either positive or negative), systematically pointed out by the students, will be presented. The study also reinforces the constructive prospect involved in identifying negative results, as they offer genuine opportunities for improvement, as well as in acknowledging limitations on generating solutions that satisfy all, given that the students’ comments/opinions are not infrequently broad in scope and even contradictory. Altogether, the PBL implementation in the IEM program has been very positive for students and teachers and worth for others to follow.