Conference Agenda

Given the increasing criticality and complexity of societal challenges, higher education institutions are urged to equip students with the ability to develop sustainable solutions for 'wicked' problems. Consequently, the Challenge-based Learning (CBL) framework has attracted considerable interest in higher engineering education. However, transforming existing course curricula to CBL is a challenging endeavour since it requires careful and paced execution for maintaining the quality, synergy, and flow of existing education. Therefore, this paper proposes a perspective on CBL implementation that exemplifies a gradual transition towards educational CBL innovation while reflecting on the alignment, consistency, and coherence educators aspire to when designing courses. Accordingly, we introduce a CBL implementation continuum as a conceptual model, which connects CBL elements to Van den Akker’s Spider Web for curriculum design and describes a continuum of Mild, Moderate, and Intense CBL levels per Spider Web component. Moreover, the paper describes an online CBL implementation tool, which helps educators thoughtfully evaluate the current level of CBL in their courses and provides practical recommendations for a transition towards higher levels of CBL intensity.

Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) is an emerging approach to the design of education activities known for its benefits in fostering student engagement and, consequently, positively affecting their learning outcomes. For the educator, the ’challenge in the challenge’ is to guarantee that the CBL-based education design follows certain regulations, like ensuring proper curriculum coverage with Constructive Alignment. This challenge becomes particularly difficult to address in the field of Information Systems, within Computer Science, where multiple practices can be followed to solve the same problem. This is even more challenging when CBL is applied in the courselevel, where the curriculum of the course focuses on a subset of those practices. This paper targets two central questions for the educators willing to apply CBL while keeping Constructive Alignment in their course design: (1) How to ensure that the results based on solutions designed to address student-defined challenges can be successfully aligned to the course’s intended learning outcomes? (2) How to use these results as evidence of learning and as an assessment component? We discuss our experience and lessons learned in applying CBL for the redesign and execution of the Smart Industry Systems course of the University of Twente, while ensuring proper curriculum coverage and Constructive Alignment.

The design of user interfaces is an important and challenging topic for student designers to understand and master. The eight principles of good User Interface design are often taught using primarily cognitive approaches, which can leave room for improvement in students’ ability to apply the principles in a variety of contexts. Game-based learning tools are recognised to be beneficial in university classrooms across a variety of discipline areas and topics due to their capacity to increase engagement. This project aims to leverage the advantages of gamification and embodied learning to enhance students’ understanding and application of these principles, while drawing on the areas of experiential education, multisensory learning and social constructivism. In the proposed intervention, students will work in groups to perform a range of tasks, each designed to challenge a different sensory or motor ability. The tasks will be repeated on several occasions by each cohort, with sensory/motor capacity varied on each occasion. In order to evaluate if the students have internalised the learning objectives, study participants will then be presented with a User Interface problem, for which they must sketch out a design solution. The quality of these solutions will be compared to that of a control group.

There is increasing consensus that Engineering programmes must include space for skills learning, particularly in interdisciplinary contexts. Active learning methods, such as project-based learning, are the gold standard for teaching interdisciplinary skills. However much of the literature on these approaches focuses on relatively small class sizes, making the application in larger contexts seem unfeasible. The Integrated Engineering Programme (IEP) at University College London (UCL), is one of the most comprehensive and largest applications of active learning methodologies within undergraduate engineering curricula in the UK. Central to the IEP are active learning approaches threaded throughout the common, cross-faculty teaching framework.

A key part is the cornerstone module, Engineering Challenges. This first-year undergraduate module aims to introduce students to project work and key skills such as teamwork and communication through undertaking an interdisciplinary project. Run by 20 academic staff and 50 PGTAs and taken by close to 1000 students each year across seven departments, with material tailored to students’ disciplines, this is a complex undertaking. Team-teaching has not been widely used in HE contexts but the IEP uses it regularly. Here, the teaching team is led by the module lead, based at faculty level, and contains one to four academics from each department that takes the module. Given the rarity of this situation, this paper aims to understand how staff describe their experience of active learning and team-teaching within this large-scale context, key elements for the success, what barriers and challenges they have faced and how they overcame them.