4.1 EFFECTIVENESS OF PBL IN ENGINEERING DESIGN FROM THE
4.2.5 Discussions
It can be found that the engineering graduates’ views on the effectiveness of university group design projects they experienced in their present work corresponded to a great extent to those opinions held by the design project module lecturers at university interviewed in this research. Similar three categories of learning effectiveness were identified, namely, engineering design, knowledge application and transferable skills.
4.2.5.1 Engineering design and knowledge application
It was within expectation that for the design related work, engineering principles and design methods can be more directly applicable than in the work that is loosely related with design. However, as the core of engineering activities, a proper understanding and appreciation of design was necessary for most engineering related work. The design process experienced in group design projects mirrors the industrial reality which helps graduates understand the engineering industry better. The way of design thinking from the broad to the specific also helps graduates to deal with problems in their work.
A difference was found between lecturers and graduates when they talked about design learning. It seemed that lecturers at university attached great importance to the creative and innovative aspect of design, which they think should and could only be learnt through practice of design. By comparison, engineering graduates seemed to attach more importance to the business aspect of design, emphasizing more the cost and budget. One reason for this is that the purpose of the graduates’ work is to produce economic value, so the issues related with finance are put to the front stage; the other reason lies in the relation between time constraint and budget in industry. One the one hand, the time constraint is much tighter in industry; on the other hand, the budget in industry is generally not so tight, leaving room for a trade off between the two:
[Interviewee C]: “We don’t come with tight budget in industry, but we do have a budget, so if it takes me a small amount of time, then I would spend a lot money and get some prototype, maybe initially, some samples made whatever. I might spend several thousand pounds, getting some stuff done, don’t get them done quickly but get them done well, spend money on tools and that sort of things, and that ultimately leaves too much more successful product, because if you do things properly by being able to spend money you would end up with something. That [kind of] opportunities aren’t available within the university.”
4.2.5.2. Transferable skills
in the real work context, whether design or non design related. However, in terms of team work skills and leadership, their usefulness was obvious for those graduates who experienced successful teamwork in group design projects at university. For the graduates who had unsuccessful teamwork, such as interviewee B in this research, no teamwork skills or leadership skills were mentioned to have been developed. For interviewee B, although the final mark of the group design project he did was good, grading A, he did most of the work and the group design project was no more than an individual design project, and he did not have the chance to learn from his team mates.
The reasons for the unsuccessful teamwork can be various. Research to date has identified the cognitive, psychological and cultural factors (Pauli, 2008). Interviewee B who had such experience thought that poor time management and low standard of learning goal by his team mates caused the down fall of their performance. These reasons are related to the self-directed learning ability and individuals’ personality (or motivation).
Self-directed learning ability could be developed in PBL. However, it should be noted that in the small group learning like PBL, self-directed learning is both the means and the end. That is to say, on the one hand, PBL is characteristic of self-directed learning and its success depends on it; on the other hand, self-directed learning ability is one of the learning outcomes in PBL. This caused a paradox in the development of self-directed learning in PBL – too much or too little supervision from the teachers may affect the development of it.
Motivation is a relatively old topic in the teaching and learning field. Compared with traditional lecture-based learning, PBL is more likely to motivate students to learn because of its student- centred nature. However, different levels of motivation may lead to unsuccessful team work. The reasons for the differences in motivation can be various: different learning standards, as in interviewee B’s design project, different learning styles in team work, different understanding of responsibility, different sense of satisfaction from the team work, different future career goals, etc. Among these, interest seemed to be the helpless one in teachers’ eyes, as lecturer C commented on his students:
“If students lack knowledge, teachers can help, but if they lack interest, then teachers can do little to help them.”
Unsuccessful teamwork in small group learning like PBL is an issue yet to be settled. Two basic measures have been used to settle this problem so far: one is the way of team formation, the other is assessment.
It can be found from the literature that there are various ways of team formation in design projects at university. Teams can be formed based on academic levels, or experiences of
engineering, or learning styles of students.
In this research, interviewee E described the different ways of team formation in the design projects at university. The second year project he did was split into three subsequent phases and for each phase the groups were rearranged, thus throughout the whole project he worked with different people in each phase. In the final year project, the groups were split on an academic basis, with the higher achievers mixing with the lower achievers and the groups were kept the same for the duration of the project. Interviewee E reflected on the benefits and defects of the two ways of team formation:
“In retrospect the benefit of this method [in the second year project] is to introduce you to a lot of different people in a working environment, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. This is much like in the real world where you end up working with a wide variety of different people with different skills. The drawback of this method is that the quality of work in each phase felt highly inconsistent depending on who was in each group, groups were chosen at random with no balancing based on ability. …The benefit of this method [in the final year project] was that the group was able to build close working relations, and the students were able to develop roles within the group, each with their own sections of the project that they were in charge of. The groups were able to plan long-term goals. Again the group-based nature of the project was very like a real design project, with people adopting various roles and responsibilities during the course of the project.”
Interviewee E did not talk about the drawback of the team formation in the final year which was on an academic basis. However, it could be seen that the groups lasted throughout the whole project. Once the team work was not successful, it was not possible for the students to have the chance to change their team mates, like what interviewee B experienced.
The other measure to prevent potential crisis in team work is assessment. Generally peer assessment is used in group design projects at university, either paper-based or web-based. However, it should be known that assessment in group design project is very difficult, and is a controversial issue itself remained to be settled satisfactorily. On the one hand, the assessment is aimed to assess each individual’s contribution to the team work; on the other hand, the aim of the group design project to is to build up teamwork skills by learning to “do it together without separate share of work” (from interviewed lecturer B). Therefore, it is a paradox between the assessment and the development of teamwork skills.
Therefore, it can be seen that more research should be done to prevent the unsuccessful teamwork and improve the quality of group design project learning at university.
4.2.6 Conclusions
Interviews were conducted with the engineering graduates to study the effectiveness of group design projects at university for their present work. Three categories of effectiveness were
identified, which were similar with the opinions of the interviewed lecturers, namely, engineering design, knowledge application and transferable skills. Differences in the effects on the work between different groups of graduates are mainly shown in the application aspects. Unsuccessful teamwork experience found in graduates indicates the necessity for more effective implementation in PBL.
4.3 CONCLUSIONS
This chapter is mainly focused on what the effectiveness of PBL is. Studies were made to identify PBL effectiveness categories from the perspectives of PBL teachers and engineering graduates via interviews. Similar categories have been identified between them. Varieties of the implementations were found from the lecturers’ interviews, which have confirmed what the literature review revealed. Unsuccessful teamwork found in graduates indicates that only knowing what the effectiveness of PBL is not enough, because how to achieve its effectiveness is still in the dark. This leads to the further study on the how issue of PBL effectiveness.
Building the Model of General Teaching and Learning & Determining Key Parameters of PBL in Engineering Design
Chapter 5.
BUILDING THE MODEL OF GENERAL TEACHING AND
LEARNING & DETERMINING KEY PARAMETERS OF PBL IN
ENGINEERING DESIGN
In chapter 4, the content of PBL effectiveness in engineering design was studied from the perspectives of engineering lectures and graduates respectively. However, that study only explained what the effectiveness of PBL is; how to achieve the optimal effectiveness is still unknown, which is not enough for PBL implementation. From this chapter, the ‘how’ issue of PBL effectiveness will be studied.