Abstract:

The development of the European Higher Education Area, assuring the quality of the higher education and fostering the mobility and employability of the graduates, has raised again the adequacy of the traditional learning strategies. In Spain, this fact has triggered a deep reflection process and testing of new methodologies, such as Problem-based learning (PBL) in various Universities. PBL has been tested and used for more than four decades and is considered effective and engaging learning process that lead to abiding and transferable knowledge.
Typically, a real life problem or project is the starting point of the PBL methodology and students, working in a collaborative environment, apply theory to practice following “learning by doing” concept. Students are the focus of the learning process, they identify what they know and the lack of the knowledge they have to accomplish the project. Workgroup, peer learning and self-learning are encouraged by the teacher-facilitator to complete the process successfully.
The paper reports the implementation process of this methodology in the Computer-Aided Design subject carried out in the last three years. Learning strategies, annotated schedules and assessment methods are presented. PBL and the traditional teaching methodology of the subject are compared and the results of the study are analysed.
To conclude, e-learning tools (e.g. the Moodle platform) used to develop the subject and to support the communication and feedback requirements are mentioned. The use of different open source software tools during the learning stages is explained.

Keywords:

PBL, computer-aided design, support.