Considerations on a PBL-Based Course on Radio Communications: a Decade's Experience

This paper reports outcomes of an investigation into a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) experience carried out throughout the last decade in the context of a non-compulsory course on radio communications at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. The experience is founded on three open-ended projects. There are significant differences in the intrinsic characteristics of the proposed assignments since they are aimed at honing specific skills of the students. A short pre-task questionnaire is handed out among the students to gauge their previous opinion about methodologies and topics addressed. A second survey is distributed among them at the end of the semester to evaluate the level of satisfaction achieved in the development of the project. Considering that data have been collected since 2001, it is possible to analyze trends and changes in the subjective judgments and the objective results. According to the students' assessment and the lecturers' experience, efforts to adopt PBL in the laboratory sessions were worth it.