Abstract:

In Civil Engineering education, it is important that students are exposed to authentic assessments through project-based learning that enables them to gain workplace skills. Project-based learning (PBL) is also one of the learning and teaching approaches for experiential education. Past PBL discussions have highlighted key facilitators in its implementation (Efstratia, 2014; Kokotsaki, et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2008). The successful implementation of PBL lies in providing students with scaffolded learning, motivation, support, and guidance throughout their learning journey (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007). This approach, when integrated into high-quality educational experiences, enables students to take small yet meaningful steps toward success. However, there are good characteristics of PBL that are not viewed favourably by students.

A study was conducted on a Civil Engineering Skills module that was delivered to 99 first-year undergraduate students at the Singapore Institute of Technology-University of Glasgow BEng (Hons.) in Civil Engineering. The students work on civil surveying in groups and learn how the data can be analysed using Python programming, which is a skill set that is required in the civil engineering industry. Depending on the physical data that was collected through the civil surveying exercise, the students work on different real-world data sets in their projects. They should appreciate the depth of the industry problem, research and obtain the necessary information to get started, which is important for self-directed learning. The students are also required to apply critical thinking to convert such an open-ended problem to a structured one that can be solved. In a team, the students learn to work effectively with their teammates, manage and leverage on multiple perspectives and explain concepts such that they can be understood by peers and lecturers.

An evaluation was developed to understand if the students clearly understand what PBL is and what they are expected to learn. The student’s level of satisfaction and their perceptions of their learning experience in meeting the intended learning outcomes were collected. In addition, the students were asked to rank the characteristics of PBL that they had experienced in their project and what they had attained in their project.

Through the evaluation, half of the cohort has ranked the application of course contents to real-life problems and the application of critical thinking to identify a structured problem as the top two areas that they have experienced in PBL. More than half of the students felt that they were most capable of examining and defining the problem. However, students were not confident in their abilities to solve the problem and report their findings. This is common in ill-structured real-life problems that may have more than one solution. They also felt that they were weak in managing and leveraging multiple perspectives from teammates and explaining concepts. As such, support in facilitating and moderating more discussions between teams would be useful to bridge the gap between skills learned in the classroom and those that are required for the workplace. In conclusion, it was observed that students enjoyed project-based learning and such learning activities excite students when they can interact and discuss and are not just passively listening. However, more support to scaffold learning for the students is required for successful PBL.

Keywords:

Project-based learning, Civil Engineering, Evaluation.