The Use of Blogs in a Project-Based Learning Context for First-Year Engineering Students’ Teams
The Integrated Project of Industrial Engineering and Management 1 (IPIEM1) is a curricular unit of the 1st year developed in the 1st semester of Master Integrated degree of Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) – University of Minho, Portugal. In the 2019’s 1st semester and in the IPIEM1 previous versions, the Project-Based Learning (PBL) was usually adopted as a learning methodology. In this pedagogical development context, freshman students develop a project integrating all five courses related to this current semester. To undertake this project, the students work in large teams that comprise nine to ten members. Throughout the semester, each team must accomplish the project phases and a lot of tasks, with a total of six milestones. Through the PBL, the team had the opportunity to apply the contents of the courses of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, e.g. STEM domains to contemporary issues to find sustainable solutions and, at the same time, develop transferable competencies. To communicate their progress and results and to make visible all the work developed during the semester, each team designed a blog. In the IPIEM1 previous editions of PBL of this year in this program, the weblog (blog) digital technology was also adopted, but it was never assessed. This was the first academic year (2019-20) which the blog was assessed. The coordination team of teachers and tutors decided to change the assessment methodology including a percentage related to the design of the blog. Also, they demanded that this must be designed in the English language. This requirement had two main purposes: to promote English writing and to reach the international public. Thus, this paper has twofold objectives: 1) to evaluate the blog importance for the teams, through a survey already in place to evaluate other PBL aspects; 2) to discuss teams’ engagement in developing it, knowing that it was assessed. The survey results revealed that the teams considered the blog useful to keep an updated record of the project progress and to stimulate the writing about project contents. Furthermore, some teachers (internal and external to the project) and students’ considerations showed the need for a blog´s training by the teams. As it was an experience, this was not carefully prepared. Also, for the teachers this was also a new component to assess that brings some challenges and difficulties in assessing the digital technology use, even if some criteria was established. So, some improvements in the blog assessment criteria revealed necessary.
The Use of Blogs in a Project-Based Learning Context for First-Year Engineering Students’ Teams
Category
Technical Paper Publication
Description
Session: 09-01-01 Curriculum Innovations, Pedagogy and Learning Methodologies
ASME Paper Number: IMECE2020-23768
Session Start Time: November 18, 2020, 04:05 PM
Presenting Author: Anabela Alves
Presenting Author Bio: Anabela C. Alves main research interests are in the areas of Production Systems Design and Operation; Lean Production (Lean Healthcare, Lean Services, Lean Product Development, Lean & TRIZ, Lean-Green and Lean & Ergonomics); Production Planning and Control, Project Management and Engineering Education, with particular interest in active learning methodologies, Project-Led Education (PLE), Project/Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Lean Education. She is author/coauthor of more than 130 publications in conferences publications or communications, 2 books, 2 co-edited books, 4 editions of conference proceedings, 21 book chapters and 30 international journal articles. She participated in 25 events abroad and 26 in Portugal. She supervised one PhD and she is supervising 5 PhD, supervised one post-doc, 61 Master dissertations and co-supervised 15, besides having supervised 22 BSc. degree projects in the areas of Industrial Engineering and Management. In their professional activities interacted with 40 collaborators in co-authorship of scientific papers. She is member of the Scientific and Organizing Committee of the International Symposium on Project Approaches in Engineering Education (PAEE), (http://paee.dps.uminho.pt). She was involved in 3 financed projects and one in progress with industry. She was visiting scholar in Oakland University, US (7 of September to 7 of December 2014). She was a mobility teacher in University Polytechnique delle Marche (Ancona, Italy) under Erasmus+ program (27 May to 1 june, 2018) and Bucarest university, Romenia. She is member of SEFI working group in Ethics. She is also member of the following societies and networks: SOCOLNET - Society of Collaborative Networks; I*PROMS Network of Excellence; Portuguese Society of Engineering Education (SPEE); Portuguese Institute of Industrial Engineering (IPEI); American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME); Lean Education Academic Network (LEAN), European Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management (EPIEM) and IEM Care Foundation.
Authors: Anabela Alves University of Minho
Ana C. Pereira University of Minho
Celina P. Leão University of Minho
Sandra Fernandes Portucalense University
Andre Uebe-MansurInstituto Federal Fluminense