PROJECT BASED LEARNING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A UNIVERSITY TEACHER - CASE STUDY

Teaching on the basis of the Project Based Learning assumes interdisciplinary learning, experimenting and creating innovative solutions in cooperation with the economic environment. Imagine, you are a University teacher, who has just commenced leading a course in accordance with the Project Based Learning with a six persons group of students. In order to realize project tasks efficiently you assign particular roles to particular members of the group, on the basis of individual predispositions. In this project, just like in any other group, you need a coordinator, a moderator, a speaker, a recorder, a time keeper and a perfectionist. Being a tutor/expert, you assume a role of facilitator and support students, inspiring them by posing open questions and letting them take advantage of your experience. Students search for information on their own. They actively participate in discussions, leading themselves to the goal. With each meeting, you see their progress and feel their success, that is your success, too. You also observe that apart from gaining interdisciplinary specialist and technical knowledge the students master their key behavioral skills. They improve their team work abilities, solve conflicts, give and receive feedback. So, a question arises. How come, the group is so successful? There are may factors. First of all, all the group members are fully engaged in the activities. Secondly, team members (students, tutors, experts) are coming with good intentions, really willing to use the project for their personal development. Then, success is achieved when the whole project teams is convinced that cooperation is a process which needs to be taken care of, in order to be satisfied with the performance. The article describes an individual course of studies realized as a Project Based Learning. It presents basic elements of "learning through designing" at the faculty of Environmental Engineering viewed from the perspective of the university teacher. The competence matrix was used to evaluate and compare student learning using the project based learning method. The matrix was made available by the Career Office at the Silesian University of Technology and was conducted at the beginning and end of the course. The matrix included such competences as: aim to results, strategic thinking, planning and organization, problem solving, project management. Soft competences were also evaluated: communication skills, teamwork and emotional intelligence. The results obtained show that student participation in PBL has significantly improved higher-level cognitive skills, own effectiveness, teamwork and communication skills.