AN EXAMPLE OF PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING (PBL) FROM A COLLABORATIVE AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

In order to bring college students to the world of business, we are developing an Educational Innovation and Improvement Project at the Universitat Politècnica de València (Valencia, Spain) during this semester. In this project, students face a real problem presented by a real company. Students develop a solution to this problem using the problem-based learning (PBL) method.

Given the complexity of the task, this teaching methodology is being carried out by working groups (3-4 students). All group members must contribute to the elaboration of the final solution. Therefore, the learning process acquires a collaborative nature.

We are developing this project in our University in bachelor´s degree in Business Administration and Management, bachelor’s degree in Tourism, master’s degree in Agricultural Engineering and master’s degree in Construction.

The PBL method is a useful tool for building a range of generic skills. However, we only focus on some of them. The aim of the project is to assess students’ achievement in four generic skills: Ability to think practically and apply knowledge in practical situations, Ability to analyse and resolve problems, Teamwork and leadership ability and Awareness of current business issues. We also want to measure the differences based on student profile as the project has a multidisciplinary approach.

The assessment is different for each skill. Depending on the skill, we use a written report by group, student self-evaluation, student co-evaluation and/or observation. The deadline for reports submission is April 25th, 2016. Student self-evaluation and student co-evaluation will take place on this date or after this date using a questionnaire. This is the reason why we can’t show results yet. However, we will be able to present our results in the final paper.