Problem-Based Learning

We had a very interesting trip to Aalborg and Aarhus universities. The focus of each was very different, but not unrelated.

At Aalborg, we learned about their problem-based learning approach. The entire university uses this approach; it is not an ad hoc tool. During a given semester, half of the students' work is on a real project, which they work on in small teams. These projects come from industry or government, and ask the students to deal with a real problem that the sponsoring organization needs to be addressed. The project groups get a faculty mentor, who meets with the team usually once a week during the project. The other half of the students' work is in the form of traditional classroom instruction, but in the form of short courses (typically 1 or 2 ECTS) which focus on tools that the students need in order to tackle their project.

I love this approach... it would tend to create a lot of motivation in the students for learning, because it is so clearly real. The only real issue I see is from the standpoint of someone at other universities wanting to implement something like this. It would not be possible for me, for instance, to do this with my classes; it has to be done on an institution-wide basis. That said, I really wish we could...

At Aarhus, there were several different things we observed, mostly involved at the institutional / administrative level about teaching support. However, we did have a session with an extremely interesting professor, who described using Christopher Alexander's ideas of design patterns as an approach to her course design. She effectively co-creates classes with the students using design patterns for organizing the final course structure. This implicitly involves the student in their own learning, without turning it into a free-for-all because of the use of patterns. A very interesting approach, that I would like to explore myself. I will have to re-read Alexander to see how I could apply it to course design (I have previously used his ideas in forming ideas for software design, something that is common in the object-oriented field of software development).

In all, some great food for thought, though I am not sure how much will be directly applicable.