Abstract:

In this contribution, we present an interdisciplinary pilot Challenge Based Learning (CBL) experience that has been developed at the Telecommunication Engineering School of the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM). This experience consisted in forming groups composed by students with different backgrounds in order to propose a solution to a challenge. The main purpose of this experience was that the students acquired the competences associated to CBL while acquiring the skills associated to their respective courses. The students participating in the experience came from the Telecommunication Engineering (TE) and Biomedical Engineering (BE) degrees, from the courses about Consumer Electronics (CE) and Biophotonics (BPHOT), respectively. The challenge that was proposed to the groups was the development of a company and a prototype based on components of consumer electronics, especially on photonic devices, for applications in biology and biomedicine.

The groups consisted in 4-6 people that had regular meetings with their supervisor in order to discuss and check the development of the project. Due to the low number of students enrolled in BPHOT in the last year, not all the groups were formed by students from both degrees. This fact allows us to compare between heterogenous and homogeneous groups. The evaluation in this kind of experiences always present difficulties. Although the professors did a weekly follow-up of the groups, it is difficult for them to know in depth the dynamics of the groups. For this reason, we considered several factors for the evaluation of the students: the participation in the meetings, the public presentation of the work, the documentation of the project and the individual contribution to the group. This last point of the evaluation was quantified by means of a series of anonymous surveys to verify the functioning of the group and to be able to evaluate the individual contributions to the development of the project.

In the light of the results of the surveys, we can conclude that the heterogenous groups, formed by students from both degrees, achieved a higher degree of involvement and motivation than the homogenous groups. As a consequence of this motivation and together with the other evaluation factors, we observed that the students of the heterogenous groups achieved a deeper knowledge of their respective courses and therefore they obtained excellent qualifications.

Keywords:

Challenge Based Learning, Interdisciplinary, Collaborative Learning, Project Oriented Learning, Design-Thinking.