CLASSROOM TEACHING, PROJECT-BASED TEACHING, OR SOMETHING IN-BETWEEN?--EXPERIENCES FROM MACHINE DESIGN COURSES

摘要

Most of the requirements claimed by industry to engineering educators are common in a globalized world; however, the approaches followed by universities to cope with them differ from country to country. Higher education teaching involves not only the mere transfer of knowledge but it should also provide future engineers with those skills demanded by society and an entrepreneurial world. The teaching methods and pedagogical techniques employed in a particular academic system are often influenced by the tradition and political background of the nation to which such system belongs. Some academic systems encourage students to take full responsibility of the learning process by completing a project with open solutions where a critical eye is essential and not every alternative is valid. This is the case of project-based learning activities. Other educational systems following more traditional approaches tend to bound students' initiatives by organizing teaching activities more rigidly, limiting the students' options to listen and accept without considering their personal views. This attitude places most of the learning responsibility on the instructor. Nevertheless, both styles have strong points and weaknesses, and project-based learning, while excellent for some subjects and situations, might not work for others where traditional teaching could fit perfectly. Very often the optimal result is obtained with a combination of both philosophies in the same course. This paper reports the experiences learned at two European universities after several years of teaching a Machine Design course structured as a combination of traditional lectures and project-based learning, that is, lecture-based plus project-based teaching (LPBT).