The Use of Active Methodologies for Teaching-Learning Systems in Telecommunications

This article discusses the adoption of the Problem Based Learning (PBL) and Project Based Learning (P2BL) approaches in the teaching/learning process of telecommunications. A computational environment was defined to combine these two approaches which focused on the teaching of courses that cover topics related to telecommunications systems. Newly graduated professionals face difficulties when entering the job market, as they have to deal with situations that are not experienced in the academic world. There is still a tendency to rely on traditional approaches for the teaching of telecommunications systems that have proved to be inefficient, as they are only concerned with content and not the applications that the student will require in the job market. The aim of this research is to investigate whether the adoption of PBL and P2BL in a computational environment can enhance student learning more effectively than the traditional teaching approach. This involved conducting an experiment in 7 undergraduate classes to compare the performance of the students that adopted PBL and P2BL with that of the students who were taught with the traditional approach. Data were collected on the grades obtained by the students in the courses and these were statistically analyzed. The results show that the adoption of PBL and P2BL led to the students achieving a 32% increase in performance. However, it was noted that the infrastructure of the institutions directly influences the way the approaches are adopted and, hence affects, the results.