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Improving retention and soft skills through project-based learning: A proposal of the College of Engineering and the Center for Innovation in Education at Universidad Panamericana María del Carmen García Higuera, Joaquina Niembro García, Armando Alemán Juárez
María del Carmen García Higuera, Isabel Joaquina Niembro García, Armando Alemán Juárez
Abstract
Our understanding of teaching and learning in higher education has changed dramatically in recent years. New models of teaching refer to student-centered, active participation, and technology and social media integration, among others. Besides, since 2003, ABET, the accreditation board for engineering and technology programs, introduced a set of skills, called professional skills that engineering graduates should possess such as multidisciplinary teamwork, ethical responsibility, effective communication, and life-long learning. Despite these efforts, a gap has been identified in the skills graduates have and those needed to succeed in the workplace (PayPal, 2016).
Moreover, pre-college preparation plays a significant role in the level of success in STEM courses, and in consequence in the decision of students to stay in their programs. For some students, first-year STEM courses are easy to take, and for others, they are very challenging and frequently they do not succeed (Chen, Soldner, 2013).
To address the previous problems, the College of Engineering at Universidad Panamericana partnered with the Center for Innovation in Education to redesign the introductory physics course. The primary objective of the course is to teach pre-college physics through project-based learning (PBL) and to develop soft skills through well-designed activities.
This paper is divided into two sections. The first section presents a description of the physics course including the design characteristics, the number of sections taught and the number of students attending the class, and a brief description of the professors.
The second section describes preliminary results of the focus group interview with the students participating in the class. Students described professors´ strengths and challenges in teaching the course such as their patience, the knowledge of the subject, and their difficulties of planning and managing time in the redesigned course. Also, the students refer to their learning experience as challenging and rewarding. They share how they were able to develop soft skills such as creativity, and critical thinking, problem-solving, and verbal communication among others. Finally, students shared how they were able to relate the class content with the practical profession of engineering.
Keywords: Engineering education, soft skills, project-based learning
Publicación original en
EDULEARN18 Proceedings
Año 2018
doi
10.21125/ edulearn.2018.0502
Referencia bibliográfica
García-Higuera, M. C., Niembro-García, I. J. y Alemán-Juárez, A. (2018). Improving retention and soft skills through project-based learning: A proposal of the college of engineering and the center for innovation in education at Universidad Panamericana. EDULEARN18 Proceedings, 1707-1712. doi: 10.21125/ edulearn.2018.0502
1. INTRODUCTION AND
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The concept of teaching and learning in higher education has changed dramatically in recent years. New models of teaching refer to student-centered, active participation, and technology and social media integration among others. Besides, since 2003, ABET, the accreditation board for engineering and technology programs, introduced a set of skills, called professional skills that engineering graduates should possess such as multidisciplinary teamwork, critical thinking, and effective communication effective communication. Despite these efforts, a gap has been identified in the skills graduates have and those needed to succeed in the workplace (1).
Besides, it is well studied that pre-college preparation plays a significant role in the level of success in STEM courses, and in consequence in the decision of students to stay in their programs. For some students, first-year STEM courses are easy to take, and for others, they are very challenging and frequently they do not succeed (2). To address the previous problems, the College of Engineering at Universidad Panamericana partnered with the Center for Innovation in Education to redesign an introductory physics course. The primary objective of the course is to teach pre-college physics through project-based learning (PBL) and to develop soft skills through well-designed activities.
This work aims to describe the experience of the applying problem-based learning methodologies, on an introductory physics course. This paper is divided into two parts. The first part presents a description of the physics course including the design characteristics, the number of sections taught and the number of students attending the class, and a brief description of the physics department. The second part describes preliminary results of the focus group interview with the students participating in the class. Participants describe their experience in the project-based learning course, and how they were able to relate the class content with the practical profession of engineering. They also share how they were able to develop soft skills such as creativity, and critical thinking, and problem-solving among others.
2. THE INTRODUCTORY PHYSICS COURSE THROUGH PROJECT-BASED LEARNING
The engineering college at Universidad Panamericana is going through a curricular renovation process in which, a very important aspect, is to develop soft skills among graduates. That is why it was planned that the students of the introductory physics course develop: Analytic and systematic thinking, creativity, teamwork and verbal communication skills, besides pursuing the primary academic objective of the course. Project-based learning was considered as an excellent instructional strategy to align the general aim of the course with the soft skills development plan.
The physics department at Universidad Panamericana is very diverse. Professors are men and women between 25 to 55 years, with masters degrees or Ph.D. on engineering and science subjects. Some are full-time and some part-time professors. They share some fundamental aspects, such as their science and engineering education, scholar vocation for teaching basic sciences and their application.
The physics introductory course includes diverse topics such as: Static and dynamic principles, Newton’s laws, energy and work. These subjects are developed more deeply on later courses. The main academic objective of the course is to make the student capable of recognizing different phenomena related to the discipline of physics and identifying the different factors to consider in each case. The student by the end of the course will be able to explain in a clear and concrete way the model that allows a solution of an specific problem.
In addition to three minor projects, a final project was designed for the adequate development of the previously mentioned soft skills and to allow stu-
dents to apply the concepts learned in a dynamic and fun way. Its purpose was that the students of the course, on separate teams, design, build, try and disassemble an 8-step Goldberg Machine, applying and documenting the principles learned on the physics course.
A Goldberg Machine is a machine that performs a specific task in an ordinarily complicated sequence that follows specific steps linked together in a way that each step triggers the next one until the task is completed. The machine can be built of any non-dangerous material available to the students and will be evaluated at the end of the course, by three fundamental aspects. The first is Blueprints and work on the Dossier. Students will be assessed following the steps of the blueprints previously designed, so the machine is assembled in its optimal conditions. Then, a Dossier will be evaluated. This Dossier will contain every calculation and scheme made for the machine to be built. The second aspect to be evaluated is the machine functionality: The machine should function correctly according to the Dossier calculations and schemes, following the previously planned steps without human interactions. And finally, the third aspect to be evaluated is the disassembly of the machine, students should be able to dismantle the machine without excessive force and in a way that shows the students knowledge of the machine components.
3. METHODOLOGY AND RESULTS
OF THE STUDY
3.1 Methodology
The purpose of the study was to understand the experiences of first-year engineering students taking the redesigned introductory physics course at Universidad Panamericana. The course was designed to improve retention and to develop soft skills through Project-Based Learning.
A focus group was conducted with thirty firstyear engineering students from different sections seeking to understand the perceptions of students regarding their learning experiences. During the focus group interview, facilitators started by describing the purpose of the study and assuring confidentiality. An interview guide was used, with a set of questions about the students’ experiences with projects, professors, and classmates. The semi-structured interview guide allows to prioritize the questions and help with the conversation flow. The focus group was audio recorded and transcribed for analysis.
Qualitative data analysis is primarily inductive and comparative. We chose a basic qualitative research approach described by Merriam and Tisdell (3) as a simple way to understand a phenomenon and the perspectives of the people involved. We used a constant comparative method of analysis which consists of identifying units of information, and compare them to determine similarities; recurring patterns are then grouped into categories, and relationships between these categories are identified (4).
To assure validity and trustworthiness, two researchers worked on the analysis, and results were presented to the professors who taught the class. Results were also compared with the literature to identify similarities and differences.
3.2 RESULTS
Initial categories are described in the following sections. These categories include day-to daycourse experiences with projects, professors, and learning, and the perceived soft skills acquired during the course.
COURSE EXPERIENCE
Course description
Students describe how different was the Intro-
ductory Physics class structure from other STEM classes. They shared how professors explain less theory and work on the different projects. Student 1 shared, for instance, “ I think the challenge was to adapt to the new teaching style, you need to be flexible and adapt.”
Regarding their learning experiences, students describe how the projects were used throughout the course. Student 3 explains,
We cover the main topic (theme), and we added three steps to our project with the topic just covered, and that was the way we advanced in the class.
Similarly, student 15 comments, “I think it is a good point because we work on three practical projects apart from the Goldberg machine.”
Moreover, students explain how this course introduced them to a new model of work, students share
… if you haven´t seen something before, it is a good time to start, there is a first time for everything, and you learn things by doing. I think this course is good [Student 8]
… you are an adult, and you are in college, you have the tools. I think this [course design] is much better. In addition, [grading] for projects and theory is 50-50, you do not have a lot of pressure. You think how I am going to solve this problem, I think this course is closer to what I had in mind when I started engineering.[Student 6]
Even though most participants value the projects as a learning experience, a few students were not able to relate the projects to theory, and they perceived the projects were not well designed to have meaning, Student 12, illustrates “ personally, I was lazy to stay until 5 o´clock to build a paper tower”.
Students seemed to enjoy the class and were able to relate it to the discipline of engineering, students explain, for instance,
… projects, I think it is much better because we enter directly to engineering, because when you are working `professionally you will not want to know about forces and acceleration, but we are going to be presented with a problem, and we will know how to solve it. That is, it is ok that the course is physics, … and just see the theoretical base. I think this is much better and must be implemented in other courses; you have a problem … it’s like… I do not know how to apply a circular movement to build a mousetrap, but you are giving me initiative in some way. [student 6]
...We can say that a formula is not exact, there is an error margin; how can I solve this problem? This is, at last, an engineering job. [Student 13]
Students also perceived that the content of the course was different depending on the professor who was teaching, student 23 described,
I have talked to a friend, and they do completely different things, for example, some students have covered physics but not calculus while we, we covered calculus. In addition, some students, like those with professors M, cover more material and we cover like pre-college physics. It is like everybody covers what he or she likes.
They also shared, that they would like content to be unified among the different sections:
I´d like the content to be unified, at least the [different] topics. At least I think it is bad to
realize that in the other session the group are covering topics that you didn’t see ... [Student 24]
It depends on how hard is the professor. [Student 9]
Some students describe the class as very challenging while others perceived that the content was easy to learn and very repetitive,
I knew it was an introductory class, and we will briefly discuss most of the topics, but we didn´t cover much. [Student 12]
...I was expecting more from the university experience, and I understand that if a classmate does not understand you need need to explain for a project, but to be in the fifth class still in speed it´s enough, Tell him he needs to study more. [Student 6]
Even though most of the students perceived the class as less challenging than most of their other classes, some students did not cover college physics in high school and shared how they believed the content was covered very fast. Student 21 explains, for instance,
I will prefer the professor to explain slower, I know some students covered these topics in high school, and they would like the professor to go faster, but for me I do not understand ...
Pre-college preparation was shared by most participants, and they even suggest that sections should be arranged according to their physics experience in high school. Moreover, students associate this situation with time management problems, on the one hand, some students explain that they did not cover a lot of material in class while on the other hand, other students shared that the material was presented very fast.
Theory and practice
Referring to how theory and practice were related in the class, students describe how important was for them to apply theory to practice; however, they also shared they have some difficulties with some professors. Student 9 details how important was for him to apply formulas and relate them to physics:
We started in class covering vectors, and then we realized that most formulas related to speed, position, acceleration; based on that theory we were solving many answers to the problem. That´s how we were relating the physics class and its application.
Similarly, student 22 describes,
We review [in class] both parts, this is, theory and practice, graphs, calculus, and the practical side meaning if it [the project] is working or how to fix it and we were able to understand a little bit of how things work. I really like the way we are learning physics, to cover theory and practice combined, to have a better idea of how things work.
Participants also share how important was to consider a marginal error in their projects, student 2 share, for instance, “Parabolicas, for example, you know how to calculate them, but they can be affected by different factors, so you need to consider marginal errors.”
However, as stated before, students also perceived some difficulties with professors relating theory with practice, student 15 shared, for instance,
… from my point of view, the big problem is found in relating theory to practice. I believe that is where they [professors] lack… the car and the mousetrap, they never told us why the [team] car won the project, something like the car was heavier, the tire was lighter or bigger… or in the egg drop project, they didn´t mention why a structure was better than the other. So what was not working [in the class] were not the projects, neither the theory, it was the relationship between theory and practice.
Especially, students explain how they were expecting a closing or final explanation of the projects, student 19 describes, for instance,
I understand that doing some research is part of the class, but at the and even though we won the challenge the professor didn´t say why, we just won. I didn´t get anything about how to improve a circular movement.
Furthermore, some students shared they were expecting professors to review the projects that did not work to learn from mistakes, some kind of step to step process. Student 14 explains, “I think it will be good if they [professors] also review the errors, why things are working or not working, like helping us step by step reviewing our projects.”
Moreover, some students feel frustrated because they were not able to relate theory to practice, “….and then I realized that the calculations would not work in reality and I just decided to set it at 10 cm, then 5, then 3. I didn´t like it because projects and theory were things covered separately.” [Student 15]
It was very interesting that students differ on how to teach the class. Some students argue that it was better to start with theory and then apply the theory to practice while others believed that trying the projects without theory was beneficial, and after doing [trying to do] the projects it was easier for them to understand the theory. Student 18 shared for instance, “Because many things were intuitive, we knew in advance that won´t work as we calculate them, so we learned from experience .”
In contrast, some students were used to review the theory and then applied to practice,
I like to do the calculus, and then tried it and understand why it didn´t work, ...it was hard for me to understand how to consider other factors [not reviewed in class] in practice. [Student 13]
We are freshman students, so in practice, we can not add all the elements like pressure, so we need to cover first the theoretical part, analyze it, and once you understand try it. [Student 2]
One of the most interesting findings in this study is how students felt confident in doing their projects and how they felt motivated to try different things, because of the many projects they have and the grading system, students detail,
… it is very good because when you take theory to practice you are not stressed out or you are not afraid of failure, but you are motivated to try. [Student 7]
For example in the mouse trap [project] half an hour before [class] it was not working, but we were not stressed, because even though we were getting five 5 (reprobatory grades), we will get better grades on the rest of the projects. At the last minute, it [the mouse trap] worked just fine, but we weren´t stressed. [Student 6]
Soft skills
Soft skills are described in the literature as hard and soft; hard skills are associated with technical abilities and knowledge that is easy to observe, especially in the workplace. These skills are usually taught in college courses, and for first-year students in engineering, they include mathematics, physics, and computer programs. These courses are evaluated using tests and projects (5,6).
In contrast, soft skills are harder to identify and describe; most authors include critical thinking, communication skills, and teamwork among others (5). Also, these skills are harder to evaluate. Surveys to employers such as PayScale (1) report the need to improve these skills among college graduates.
Student participants in this study describe that creativity and improvisations were some of the skills they needed to work on their projects, student 6 shared “... no manual tells you how to do the project. You need to be creative to solve it”.
Similarly, students reveal,
Because we, in the egg drop project improvised, we needed to think of something that handles the impact, we improvised, we thought of what can we do to repair our first project . [Student 5]
Finally, student 28 shared, “ In real life nobody is going to tell you how to solve a problem, it is your problem to figure out how to solve it.”
Moreover, student 28 shared, “…[the course ] helps to develop your creativity, because if you start a project and it doesn´t work, you think of another way to do it, until you get it.”
In addition to creativity student perceived that analytic thinking was necessary for the class, that they required analyzing what they were doing. Participant 30 explains “Personally I think I have improved, systemic and analytic think played a big role in the development of the projects.”
Furthermore, student 2 describes that because the course was based on projects he was able to develop creativity, and logic, especially when the project did not work, and he needed to review the process.
Finally, students say they learned to be tolerant to frustration, students clarify,
...sometimes I was not able to see the problem, it was hard to take theory to practice, and the Goldberg machine was not working. .. Finally, we were able to solve it. [Student 6]
I learn to see things positively, where did I need to go, what is the most logical steps to get there… [Student 21]
One project, the paper tower, was mentioned specifically as a teamwork strength developer, student 16 describes,
I was the blind man, and I was folding papers I didn’t see anything. Other [students] were telling me that they were finishing, I was just standing like for 10 minutes, my friends were there. Finally, we won, we really have to be coordinated, and that is what I like the most…
4. CONCLUSIONS
The study describes the experience of students of a PBL introductory physics course at the College of Engineering at Universidad Panamericana. The course was designed with the Center for Innovation in Education to develop soft skills and to address the problem of different knowledge of physics from entry level students. The qualitative perspective gave us a deep understanding of the experiences and learnings students acquired. Mainly results include the day-to-day experiences such as the benefits and areas of opportunity of the course, and how they perceived the proposed relation of theory and
practice. In addition, they share how they were able to the develop soft skills, such as creativity, analytical thinking, and tolerance to frustration.
Findings provide insights to move to a student-centered model. Higher education institutions need to include learning projects and partner with different centers to reshape the curricula and provide different learning experiences to develop not only hard skills but also soft skills among its graduates. This study reveals that even though students enjoy the projects, not all the professors were prepared to adjust to the new teaching model. Training is needed to take advantage of this model, to improve learning. [6] Shakir, R. (2009). Soft skills at the Malaysian Institutes of higher learning. Asia Pacific Education Review, vol.10, pp. 309-315.
REFERENCES
[1] Pay Scale, Workforce-Skills Preparedness
Report, 2016. Retrieved from https://www. payscale.com/about/press-releases/payscale-and-future-workplace-release-2016-workforce-skills-preparedness-report. August 24th, 2017 [2] Chen, X., & Soldner, M. (2013). STEM Attrition: College students’ path into and out of STEM fields (NCES 2014-001). Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014001rev. pdf Cheryan, S., Master, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2015). [3] Meriram, S. & Tisdell E. (2016). Qualitative research. A guide to design and implementation. 4th Ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. [4] Creswell, J.C. (2003). Educational research.
Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall. [5] Schulz, B. (2008). The importance of soft skills: Education beyond academic knowledge. Journal of Language and Communication, pp. 146-154.
