DESIGN AND INNOVATION WITH PROBLEM BASED LEARNING METHODS: AN ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE

Of the many diverse and fascinating challenges we face today, the most intense and important is how to understand and shape the new technology revolution. One would assume that the educational systems in particular for undergraduate engineering students would follow the same trend and that educating engineers should be affected by this paradigm change. Recently, there has been a political wind that is blowing in the direction of problem based and in particular, research based learning methods. Problem based learning and problem based project are teaching methods in which the students initially are presented with a problem to be solved, prior to any form of lectures. The learning shall take place as the students try to solve the problem. They will have to find the information they need, structure the information and evaluate if it is sufficient to solve the problem. The tasks given to a graduated engineer will often be problem solving or to create new products or services. There are challenges to integrate these learning methods with other criteria that involves innovation and creativity. In our department, we have experience with problem based learning in single courses and we will share our learning points. In this paper, we are presenting a combinational problem based learning as it is comprehended from an engineer perspective, and specifically sketch how we could activate different cognitive levels in a learning model that uses problem based learning.