Addressing integrated learning through project-based courses : five years of improvements

• Project-based educational forms are at the core of the CDIO concept, where students should be trained in contexts of complex enough tasks to prepare for the complexity of industry projects. Besides from fulfilling a project in itself, CDIO points out the importance of achieving integrated learning skills, including personal and interpersonal skills (CDIO Syllabus sections 2 and 3), where those are desired to meet the challenges of the working processes.Projects in education moreover correspond to active learning, where students are encouraged to learn through solving the problems required to fulfill the goals of a project. Being active in the process of completing a project, does not only imply disciplinary training, but also training in achieving generic skills, such as experimentation, knowledge discovery, system thinking, teamwork, and communication. All in all, a conclusion is that student activities in project-based teaching and learning relate to all four sections of the CDIO Syllabus, and hence active learning will here contribute to integrated learning. Thus, activating students in project-based courses should have several positive values.However, experiences show that one problem in project-based courses is that of activating a major part of a student group. Here, a common pattern is that some students are not contributing enough, resulting in other students covering up for them, or risking the whole project. Therefore, teaching efforts should be put on finding ways to widen the group of active students.The project-based course Software Engineering 2, at Kristianstad University, Sweden, has undergone several years of improvements in order to, on one hand reduce the number of passive students, and on the other hand increase values of generic skills from the CDIO Syllabus. This paper will present development steps of that course. Methods, where some have been inspired from the Software Engineering industry, will be covered, and results of using those will be provided. A major result is that of increasing values of integrated learning, where this in itself contributes to the core of CDIO.

Subject headings

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Project-based course

integrated learning experiences

CDIO learning outcomes

ethical aspects

capability-maturity model (CMM)

self-awareness

Standards: 5

7

8

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)