Innovative pedagogies in engineering education – preliminary findings from the teaching practices of American and Canadian educators

Abstract

This research is focused on the experiences of Canadian and American engineering educators and their implementations of innovative pedagogies such as problem-based learning (and its variations) into their teaching practices. Educators identified several aspects related to PBL use in their context, including the key PBL components they use and the tensions that they encounter at the classroom and system level when implementing such learner-centered pedagogies. Engineering education has been undergoing reform efforts for several years. Not only have PBL approaches been deemed by research literature to be an optimal approach to develop graduate competencies and attributes, but many reform efforts utilize explicitly or implicitly key components of PBL. Implications and future research opportunities are presented.