Expanded PBL Curriculum Model for Diverse Educational Settings

Responding to the Needs of Engineering Education

Abstract

Over the years, engineering education has continually adapted to meet the changing needs of society, technological progress, and industrial demands. In recent years, these drivers have included societal challenges such as sustainability and ethical innovation, technological advances like artificial intelligence (AI) and the growing electrification of homes and transportation, and industrial demands for engineers with strong cross-disciplinary collaboration, communication, and management skills. At the same time, engineering education institutions are facing new and growing challenges, including larger, more diverse student cohorts alongside limited institutional budgets. To address these drivers and challenges, researchers in engineering education have recommended the use of more flexible, student-centred, and active learning strategies, designed to reflect authentic engineering environments. One such suitable strategy is problem and project based learning (PBL), which can be implemented in traditional face-to-face, online and blended environments. However, recent research and global events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have highlighted the need for clearer guidance to support engineering educators in adopting PBL in digital learning environments. In this paper, the authors seek to support engineering educators’ development, implementation, and evaluation of PBL in online and blended environments by explaining the PBL spectrum and proposing an expanded PBL framework. This proposed framework builds on the PBL Curriculum Model developed by Kolmos et al. (2009) by including additional consideration for diverse educational environments.