Industrial engineering and management PBL implementation: An effortless experience?

Abstract

The School of Engineering of the University of Minho offers 15 distinct engineering programs, being Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) one of them. This program includes 45 compulsory courses over a 5-year timeframe period, from which 16 are directly involved in three Project-Based Learning (PBL) experiences, conducted in the first and fourth years. This study focuses on the PBL experience conducted in the first semester of the first year, which involves six courses. This is an interdisciplinary semester-wide project, which promotes active learning within teams of students. It is known that this approach challenges the students' perceptions and understandings on learning at higher education institutions, and promotes the development of soft and technical competences. On the side of the staff, the management of the PBL semester represents a challenge on its own, as it requires the coordination of a reasonable number of teams, lecturers, tutors, activities and deliverables, project rooms and other resources. A huge challenge relates to the monitoring of progress and inner dynamics of the teams themselves, supporting the teams, giving feedback on their work, assessing their reports, presentations, and prototypes, among others. This paper investigates the effort involved in planning and conducting an interdisciplinary PBL semester, namely by gathering perceptions and detailing the wider context and depths of the main activities. The findings are based on the results of questionnaires and on authors' PBL practical experience at the University of Minho.