COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM AND PROJECT-BASED LEARNING: THE CASE OF OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT IN THE MASTER'S DEGREE IN MANAGEMENT ENGINEERING

The Spanish education system have had to make a turn in the pedagogical conception within the framework of the process of creating the European Higher Education Area, launched in 1999 with the Bologna Declaration.

The education model has moved beyond the memorization and repetition, homework and standardized tests designed to evaluate the students’ progress, to one where the student is an active protagonist in his or her own learning process.

In the context of this pedagogical model based on the acquisition of skills and competences that allow students to develop skills to join and advance within the working world, there are different learning strategies. Among these learner-focused strategies, we find the collaborative project-based (CPBL) and problem-based learning (PBL), which came from the field of the health sciences and have been used for professional training in medicine since the 1960’s. Both methodologies are widely adopted in engineering programs, where skills in human relations as well as technical, innovation and teamwork are competences that students should acquire by the end of their studies.

Putting aside the traditional “chalk and talk” pedagogy, this work presents the mixed-model approach that has been successfully adopted in recent years in the course “Operations Management” that is part of the curriculum of the Master's degree in Management Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). Specifically, the intention that animates our work it is shown the experience and the achieved results by students through this learning model. A model that combines a project-based and a problem-based learning strategies, from a team-based and collaborative perspective. The successes and weaknesses are also emphasized and future improvement actions are proposed to help teachers and educational actors make innovative choices and provide benchmarks for educational researchers.