Evaluating a First-Year Engineering Course for Project Based Learning (PBL) Essentials

Abstract

Abstract Engineering Exploration is a first-year engineering course designed with enduring outcomes of enhancing problem-solving skills, multidisciplinary engineering skills and promoting team work. In order to address all the enduring outcomes of this course, traditional pedagogical technique was found to be challenging which motivated the authors to use Project Based Learning (PBL) approach. This paper evaluates the elements of a first-year course titled engineering exploration against gold standard PBL framework (defined by Buck institute for Education) there by identifies and proposes the essentials to be considered while designing a first year PBL course.