Datos de contacto

* _{Faculty of Science, Health, Education and Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia} # _{UNESCO Centre in Problem Based Learning, Aalborg University, Denmark}

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Text to accompany the keynote interactive session for the International Joint Conference on the Learner in Engineering Education (IJCLEE 2015)

Engineering and Medical Education have made significant contributions in the area of pedagogical modelling. In both cases the emphasis has been on the active learner in medical or engineering education. One could argue that it is tautological to use a term such as ‘the active learner’. A person cannot learn unless the brain or body is active in some way or other. If learning is something we do which results in a discernible and fairly permanent change in what we know, or can do, or value, then a learner is by definition a doer, an active agent. From the moment we are born, and perhaps even in the womb, we are learning. Babies are practising scientists, experimenting, developing and testing hypotheses. ‘If I cry loud enough will someone change my nappy? If I say mamma I get cuddles and smiles from everyone but especially from her’. It will take time before this natural instinct becomes a more conscious and reflective activity, before we think and learn in a more deliberate and problem solving way.

All of us, no matter what our age, naturally pursue new knowledge, skills, and values, or busily reinforce or revise what we already know, do and feel. John Dewey’s timeless explanation of how we learn best by first doing and then reflecting on what we have done, was a starting point for our first ALE keynote in Copenhagen in 2012. At that conference we expanded on this theme and argued for a philosophical basis to ALE. Using Dewey we challenged an Engineering tradition that both of us have experienced. At Chalmers and Delft universities of technology we had experienced an unholy alliance between teachers and students. Higher Education is still characterised by written tests of students’ knowledge and skills and by sorting those students into graded categories. In such a system getting the best grade, or just getting through, depending on your educational ambitions, is what motivates students. In such a system political, economic or other pressures can lead some teachers and students to agree on an unwritten pact. The teachers, who really want to be researchers (since that is where the academic rewards are) say, in effect: ‘I’ll provide heavy hints to what will be in the closed-book, end-of-term exam in my lectures. Go through my old exam papers and make sure you can answer the questions there. I don’t have time to hand-feed you’. The questions that such lecturers set often test declarative knowledge and set ways of applying that knowledge. The students who want to simply get their meal ticket are content. The students who really want to deeply understand and apply the subject in new and different situations are frustrated. The Swedish expression for this is ‘korvstoppning’, which translated literally means ‘stuffing the sausage’. The English call it ‘cramming’. The teachers who push this approach reinforce their distaste for teaching but also free up time for research. They can publish more and unfortunately reap the rewards of a system that privileges research over teaching. Unfortunately in this educational approach the students become passive recipients of knowledge. The teacher is seen as the one who supplies content. All they need to do is learn it off by heart and repeat it in the end of course exams.

At Caxias do Sul in early 2014 we expanded on our argument for the importance of activating learning. We stressed again that we are all natural scientists and encouraged participants at our interactive keynote to devise and critique relevant research questions in their scholarly investigation of how to best encourage and implement active learning in Engineering Education. This year we concentrate on the theme of ‘the Active

Learner in Engineering Education’, a theme that binds the PBL Symposium, the ALE Workshop and the Project Approach to Engineering Education Conference together. It is a fitting focus for what is a ground-breaking event in Engineering Education.

We described above how students can be put in fairly passive position when it comes to learning. We know from researchers like Hounsell, Entwhistle, Marton, and Biggs [1] that students will approach their learning differently depending on the pedagogical models that their lecturers use. We want to stress from the outset that although we favour a what Dewey’s calls a ‘progressive’ approach to education there are good and bad aspects in the practical application of both traditional and progressive models. Teachers in both approaches have a great deal of responsibility. They can influence students to take what the literature refers to as a surface approach to learning. If the lecturer tests mainly for declarative knowledge students can get away with not truly understanding and applying what they are taught. It takes skill for a teacher to design a course so that students are required to take a deep approach, in other words, to really understand the subject matter and prove that by applying it in new and different situations. Models such as Problem and Project Based Learning consciously strive to activate students and a well designed PBL course has inbuilt in it authentic assessment tasks.

Dewey used the word ‘Progressive’ to contrast his educational approach to the ‘Traditional’ model that he saw in contemporary American schooling in the early 1900s. The shortcomings in either model are most obvious when practitioners pervert the philosophical and pedagogical reasons for employing one or other of the models. Some disciplines, like Medicine and Engineering, have a large amount of content and technical language that must be learned in order to communicate key concepts or carry out correct procedures. For example you must know anatomical terms if you are going to discuss and diagnose a disorder or deal with a problem in a particular part of the body. The same is true for engineers who must know formulas and technical terms if they are going to design, build and test a product or determine the causes of problems with a product. The medical student who rote learns the Latin names for parts of the body is an active learner. The engineering student who remembers formulas by heart is also an active learner. The student debating in her mind the content of a lecture she is listening to is also actively learning. But if this is all the student does then we are short changing them. Social engagement with and the practical application of knowledge, skills and values are necessary to truly activate what has been learned as an individual, no matter what educational model is used. Lecturers who love their subject and want to inspire others to learn about it tend to activate their learners even when they teach in a university that is still very traditional in terms of its values and educational architecture. However it is much easier to do that when one is working in a university like Aalborg, Denmark, that was purpose built to deliver PBL curricula. Inspiring teachers, even if they are locked into a format of lecture, tutorial, laboratory exercises and final, closed-book exam, can still devise ways of helping students to really understand and apply the content of their course. However it is easier to do that if the model has been constructed to promote understanding and application. Most of you here today fit the category of ‘inspirational teacher’. The proceedings from earlier conferences, workshops and symposia are proof of the amazing creativity and versatility you use to activate your learners. The interactive part of this keynote will allow you to share some of those ideas, techniques, exercises and systems.

Engineering, Medicine and Economics are rather conservative disciplines so it comes as a surprise that progressive educators in these disciplines have been energetic advocates for two of the most influential pedagogical models to have emerged in Higher Education in the last half century. We refer to Problem Based and Project Based Learning (PBL). In essence these two pedagogical models have been around for thousands of years. Both Confucius and Socrates (c 500 and 400 BC) stimulated rather than transmitted learning. Socrates is famous for his dialogues that forced students to think, question and problem solve. Confucius knew the importance of intrinsic motivation and commented: ‘I only instruct the eager and enlighten the fervent. If I hold

up one corner and a student cannot come back to me with the other three, I do not go on with the lesson’. One of the earliest and best known varieties of PBL is the form that was introduced in the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster, a Canadian University, in 1969. It was soon adopted elsewhere including at the medical faculties of the University of Limburg in Maastricht, Holland, the University of Newcastle, Australia, and the University of New Mexico in the United States. Today it is a worldwide phenomenon.

As is too often the case, ‘followers’ of a new educational model can became more dogmatic about its practice than the founders [2]. In 1996, nearly thirty years after the PBL movement started, Gwendie Camp was concerned that ‘true PBL’ was being watered down [3]. She insisted that unless PBL was ‘active, adult-oriented, problem-centred, student-centred, collaborative, integrated, interdisciplinary and utilized small groups operating in a clinical context’ it should not be called PBL. She correctly pointed out that if a PBL program was ‘teacher-centred’ rather than ‘student-centred’, the heart of ‘pure’ PBL would be lost [4]. Although very few would cavil at her concluding sentence there were many who objected to Camp’s ‘purist’ approach. Ranald Macdonald was one [5]. Savin-Baden [6] also argued that PBL is an approach characterized by ‘flexibility and diversity in the sense that it can be implemented in a variety of ways in and across different subjects and disciplines and in diverse contexts’. Boud and Feletti [7] pointed out that ‘The principle behind PBL is that the starting point for learning should be a problem, a query or a puzzle that the learner wishes to solve’. We also argue that there can be a number of approaches and variations in the practice of PBL. Today a large number of disciplines use PBL, in different shapes and forms.

In Business and Economics many Faculties design their architectural space to allow for ‘syndicate rooms’ where students can work on problems either as one-off tasks or as a connected series of problems that make up a whole subject or curriculum. The table opposite, which provides a simple diagrammatic sketch of PBL is taken from the English Economics Network site that includes a handbook on PBL. The site details key features of PBL and reasons for using it. The link is http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/handbook/pbl/21

In Engineering a particular form of Project Based Learning that has gathered momentum over the last 25 years is CDIO. The abbreviation stands for Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate and this model started as a curriculum project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1997. Since then it has grown into a worldwide movement in Engineering Education. CDIO and has just held its 10th _{international conference} (Barcelona, 2014) and published a second edition of the CDIO book which outlines its principles and practice. It is now spread across a number of countries and is practised in 107 different Engineering Schools. The table below taken from the CDIO website provides a useful overview.

Table 2: CDIO history. Source: http://www.cdio.org/cdio-history

Engineering educators who promote this form of project based learning argue, as the McMaster staff did, that the pedagogical model emulates the way practitioners in their profession work. Doctors diagnose medical problems and try to find remedies. Engineers design, build and test products.

It is the nature of PBL to adapt to different settings, cultures, curricula and circumstances. Camp did everyone a favour by clearly showing that PBL has its theoretical origins in the conceptual work of adult educators like Malcolm Knowles [8], a constructivist epistemology [9] and in the psychological principles of learning [10]. Having a sound philosophical basis for PBL is important. However, none of those theories espouse a dogmatic approach. PBL should not become a straitjacket for educators. It is a practical, pedagogical paradigm robust enough to be adapted by a range of disciplines and for a variety of purposes. Both Problem and Project Based Learning enable educators to prepare their students for their future professional life as opposed to simply being able to pass exams. In the concluding part of our essay we encourage participants at this joint conference to reflect on their own practice and critically analyse what constitutes the key characteristics of an Active Learner in Engineering Education. More importantly we ask ‘how can we, as educators, facilitate and encourage active learning?’.

Without getting bogged down in ‘academic’ detail it is worth comparing Project-Based and Problem-Based Learning in order to see how they can best serve the Active Learner in Engineering Education. In doing so we will answer, in a more general, theoretical way, the questions we have posed above. Are our two models the same or different? Both are concerned with engaging students in real world exercises to enhance their learning. Some tasks can be simulated, others require wider field experience in an actual workplace. We mentioned earlier that Higher Education tends to default to pen and paper exams. Both Project-Based and Problem-Based Learning emphasize performance based, authentic assessment.

We have already alluded to one of the more significant differences between the two models. Project-based learning usually has the creation of a product or an artefact as a goal. Although projects can differ widely students have to acquire the knowledge, skills and right values if they are to be successful in designing, building and testing their product. Problem-based learning, as the name suggests, begins with an issue or problem that the students need to solve or learn more about. Ill defined problems are often selected to ensure that the

scenario or case study, if that is the format which is used, simulate real life complexities. In some instances the problems are actual problems that businesses want solved. Both forms of PBL can complement one another. Which is why it is fitting that the associations that represent research into PBL and Project Based Learning in Engineering Education should come together with ALE at this joint conference. Placing of the various keynotes at the intersection of the ALE workshop, the PBL Symposium and the Project Based Learning conference eloquently demonstrates how well all three support one another in their desire to activate learning in Engineering Education.

References

[1] Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N., (eds.) The Experience of Learning: Implications for teaching and studying in higher education. 3rd (Internet) edition (2005). Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment; J. Biggs, Teaching for Quality Learning at University, SHRE and Open University Press, (1999). [2] M. Christie, “PBL and collaborative knowledge building in Engineering Education”, Paper delivered at the 2nd

International Research Symposium on PBL ’09, Melbourne, Australia, 3-4 December 2009.

[3] G. Camp, “Problem based learning: a paradigm shift or a passing fad”, Medical Education Online, 1:2 (1996) at http://www.med-ed-online.org/f0000003.htm

[4] G. Camp, “Problem based learning: a paradigm shift or a passing fad”, MEO, 1:2, 1996.

[5] R. Macdonald, “Problem based learning: implications for educational developers”, Educational Developments, 2(2), 1-5 (2001).

[6] M. Savin-Baden, Problem based learning in Higher Education: Untold stories. Buckingham: SRHE & Open University (2000).

[7] D. Boud and G. Feletti (eds), The challenge of Problem Based Learning, London: Kogan Page (1980). [8] M. Knowles, The modern practice of adult education. Cambridge: Prentice Hall, (1980).

[9] J.R. Savery and T.M. Duffy, “Problem based learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework”, Educational Technology, 35[5], 31-7 (1995;)

[10] G.R.Norman and H.G Schmidt, “The psychological basis of problem-based learning: a review of the evidence”, Academic Medicine, 67(9):557-65 (1992).

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