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The global sustainability crisis is growing by the year, and students are asking universities to increase sustainability contents in their curricula in response. The Education for Sustainability literature suggests that problem-based, interdisciplinary learning methods are well suited to imparting sustainability education. A recent quantitative study on engineering education supported this claim, showing that engineering students graduating from a systemic PBL university had increased sustainability awareness compared with graduatesfrom other universities. But how does this awareness develop and manifest during the students’ education, and what is the role of PBL therein? Answering this question requires a qualitative approach and therefore, we followed 16 PBL students across four engineering disciplines (mechanical engineering, electronicengineering, environmental planning and medialogy) during three semesters using semi-structured interviews and an interpretivist framework. We asked students to reflect on their awareness and interest in sustainability issues, in their first month of study, the end of their first year, and the middle of their second year. We were able to gauge the changes in their sustainability awareness and interest during the process of acclimatisation within their engineeringstudies.We found that in the first round of interviews, the majority of students, with the expected exception of environmental planning students, were marginally aware of sustainability issues and not very interested in the subject. By the end of the study, a notable shift towards overall increased awareness and interest wasobserved. In this paper we use the interview data to explain and categorize the changes. The results underpin and qualify a discussion of the role of PBL in fostering changes in awareness and interest in sustainability. The global sustainability crisis is growing by the year, and students are asking universities to increasesustainability contents in their curricula in response. The Education for Sustainability literature suggests that problem-based, interdisciplinary learning methods are well suited to imparting sustainability education. A recent quantitative study on engineering education supported this claim, showing that engineering students graduating from a systemic PBL university had increased sustainability awareness compared with graduates from other universities. But how does this awareness develop and manifest during the students’ education, and what is the role of PBL therein? Answering this question requires a qualitative approach and therefore, we followed 16 PBL students across four engineering disciplines (mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, environmental planning and medialogy) during three semesters using semi-structured interviews and an interpretivist framework. We asked students to reflect on their awareness and interest in sustainability issues, in their first month of study, the end of their first year, and the middle of their second year. We were able to gauge the changes in their sustainability awareness and interest during the process of acclimatisation within their engineeringstudies.We found that in the first round of interviews, the majority of students, with the expected exception ofenvironmental planning students, were marginally aware of sustainability issues and not very interested in the subject. By the end of the study, a notable shift towards overall increased awareness and interest was observed. In this paper we use the interview data to explain and categorize the changes. The resultsunderpin and qualify a discussion of the role of PBL in fostering changes in awareness and interest insustainability.

Project management and collaboration are considered core competencies in engineering education, both in relation to complex problem-solving and as part of the required professional skill set. The most common way of learning both project management and collaboration skills is by introducing different types of teambased projects in the engineering curriculum and letting students reflect on their skills development. However, the student experiencing and learning during a project process depends on the team size and duration of the project work, as well as the scope and organization of the project itself, ranging from anarrower disciplinary approach to a more contextual one, incorporating interdisciplinary and interorganizational learning outcomes.In this paper, we present a conceptual framework for understanding the variations in educational projects and intended learning outcomes for project management and teamwork. The project typology is based on two dimensions: 1) the scientific content and problem scoping, ranging from simple and complicated problems to complex and interdisciplinary problems; and 2) the size and organization of the team(s) implicitly involving project management processes on varying levels. Combining these two dimensions results in four educational project categories: the discipline project and multi-projects, addressing single discipline learning objectives on a scale from individual discipline teams to larger team clusters; and interdisciplinary projects and megaprojects, which cover contextual, complex and interdisciplinary learningoutcomes on a scale from smaller interdisciplinary teams to larger ‘teams of teams’, or clusters in collaborative networks. These four ideal types of project frame students’ learning of various complex problem-solving competencies such as problem identification, analysis and solving, collaboration skills andproject management in different ways, all relevant in engineering education. Here, we focus specifically on intended learning outcomes related to the different types of interdisciplinary projects.

Usually, a beginning activity in PBL is seeking available information relevant to the decision-making to configure the project-work. How students deal with that information has effects in both the learning outcomes and the project product. In this context, Aalborg University has structured the project-work tostudents can learn through while working in the project. Students begin their undergraduate program learning how to work projects by an initial short project P0, followed by a more extended subject project P1, to be accomplished in about three-quarters of a semester. This study explores how students addressthe project information when setting the project-work. 17 participants from two engineering programs answered open-ended interviews. Then, the study used a verbatim transcription by Thematic Analysis for code and correlations. The results indicate impacts in several features such as identification, search,quality and share of information, among others as roles and task assignment. Usually, a beginning activity in PBL is seeking available information relevant to the decision-making toconfigure the project-work. How students deal with that information has effects in both the learningoutcomes and the project product. In this context, Aalborg University has structured the project-work tostudents can learn through while working in the project. Students begin their undergraduate programlearning how to work projects by an initial short project P0, followed by a more extended subject projectP1, to be accomplished in about three-quarters of a semester. This study explores how students addressthe project information when setting the project-work. 17 participants from two engineering programsanswered open-ended interviews. Then, the study used a verbatim transcription by Thematic Analysisfor code and correlations. The results indicate impacts in several features such as identification, search,quality and share of information, among others as roles and task assignment.

Aalborg University (AAU) in Denmark practises problem-based learning (PBL) in all study programmes in all faculties. The PBL principles are broadly defined; different study programmes may choose a variety of PBL practices. The purpose of this paper is therefore to analyse how PBL student projects look in a selection of different STEM study programmes and to discuss the elasticity of the PBL principles. One would expect PBL to “look different” when comparing, for instance, projects in the humanities with science, but we want to learn if there is any variation within the STEM subjects. We analysed groups of three, four, and seven recent student Bachelor reports (6th semester) from Mathematics, Biology, and Mechanical Engineering, respectively. The subjects are taught and recognised worldwide. We focus on Bachelor reports since they show how students work with their subject by the end of a PBL education. We expect that by choosing the final projects, we avoid “beginner-issues” in PBL as the Bachelor project is the seventh PBL project the students do at AAU so any variation in the projects is not due to students not yet grasping the principles of PBL. The research methodology is documentary analysis of curricula and the reports. The focus is on how the reports describe and analyse their problem and what types of problem the students work with. Our findings show a great variation within problems but mainly the students worked with contrast problems, thus here there is room for even more diversity of projects and elasticity of PBL. Some reports did not apply PBL terminology but instead wrote, for instance, aim. Most projects were discipline projects while two were a kind of multi projects where groups collaborated with another group in different ways. Overall, we saw a great variety of PBL, which testifies to the elastic nature of PBL.

Problem-based and project organized learning is increasingly gaining traction as a pedagogical model suitable for supporting transversal competencies. Characterized by starting the learning process in authentic and exemplary problems, students at Aalborg University (AAU) engage in lengthy project-organized PBL often spanning an entire semester. The curriculum of each semester is organized in thematic blocks consisting of a large project supported by smaller individual disciplinary subject courses. The integration of the disciplinary subjects in the project is, is however, debatable. Answers from a survey distributed to 5th semester Medialogy students show that students found it challenging to integrate course content into their projects in the previous semester. Some students even found the course content irrelevant to their projects. In other words, a dissonance exists in the perceived relation between content presented in courses and content applied in projects. The situation has implored teachers to rethink the curriculum and pedagogy on the 4th semester of Medialogy.Applying Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing as an interpretive framework to interviews with teachers and semester descriptions, we will analyze the classification and framing at this re-thought 4th semester. Classification conceptualizes the insulation between subjects and contents and framing the structuring of pedagogic communication such as pacing and sequencing. Specifically, we investigate how classification is described in the formal curriculum and in interviews with teachers. Further, we will briefly analyzehow teachers reflect on the framing of the courses and projects. Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing appear to be useful when addressing the assimilation and levels of control of subjects and projects in project-organized problem-based learning. Problem-based and project organized learning is increasingly gaining traction as a pedagogical model suitable for supporting transversal competencies. Characterized by starting the learning process in authentic and exemplary problems, students at Aalborg University (AAU) engage in lengthy project-organized PBL often spanning an entire semester. The curriculum of each semester is organized in thematic blocks consisting of a large project supported by smaller individual disciplinary subject courses. The integration of the disciplinary subjects in the project is, is however, debatable. Answers from a survey distributed to 5th semester Medialogy students show that students found it challenging to integrate course content into their projects in the previous semester. Some students even found the course content irrelevant to their projects. In other words, a dissonance exists in the perceived relation between content presented in courses and content applied in projects. The situation has implored teachers to rethink the curriculum and pedagogy on the 4th semester of Medialogy.Applying Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing as an interpretive framework to interviews with teachers and semester descriptions, we will analyze the classification and framing at this re-thought 4th semester. Classification conceptualizes the insulation between subjects and contents and framing the structuring of pedagogic communication such as pacing and sequencing. Specifically, we investigate how classification is described in the formal curriculum and in interviews with teachers. Further, we will briefly analyze how teachers reflect on the framing of the courses and projects. Bernstein's concepts of classification and framing appear to be useful when addressing the assimilation and levels of control of subjects and projects in project-organized problem-based learning.

Designing modern engineering curricula requires integrating the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and generic employability skills, focusing on student-centred learning, and explicitly including learning outcomes about knowledge, skills, and competences. There is the need thus for tools that helpteachers and boards to address these demands and assure quality in educational processes and outcomes when revising and changing curricula. Higher education institutions have been developing different quality assurance strategies. However, from a teaching and learning practice perspective, there are concerns on whether such strategies guarantee curriculum coherence, especially in terms of ensuring progression and alignment between learning outcomes and more student-centred learning activities, such as problembased learning (PBL).This paper discusses the above coherence issues by addressing the following question: What are strengths and weaknesses in using taxonomies to analyse learning outcomes as mean to promote curriculum innovation and PBL implementation?The paper takes the point of departure on formulation of learning outcomes using Bloom’s revised, SOLO, and Feisel-Schmitz Technical taxonomies and in which ways they support engineering educators in redesign their courses towards PBL. More specifically, the manuscript discusses: a) the similarities anddifferences between different taxonomies; b) strengths and weaknesses of taxonomies to analyse learning outcomes for engineering education and PBL, taking the point of departure four engineering courses as case examples. We categorise different courses' learning outcomes using the referred taxonomies, and reflect on their suitability for categorising and formulating the learning outcomes in engineering education. The results enable discussing the suitability of the taxonomies in more generic settings, their limitations in formulating learning outcomes relevant for engineering practice, namely non-cognitive learning outcomes and transversal skills, and making recommendations towards improved curriculum alignment in engineering education for PBL.

The purpose of this article is to address the role of the teachers when teaching the technology subject at the Danish higher examination programme (htx). It is also the intention to address how that role is expressed in practice where use of Problem-based learning (PBL) or some PBL principles is acknowledged as a strong teaching method. Further, it is our intention to discussthe teacher role in relation to readiness of the students evolving from first to third year in the programme. This will be seen in relation to; the development of the students PBL understanding, the cognitive readiness of the students and classroom dynamics.Researching the role of the teachers in the technology subject at htx we observed in two different classes, in two different schools during a project period and discussed our findings with the teachers. In relation to the role of the teachers, we identified a variety of tasks the teachers have to deal with on a daily basis when teaching this subject. It places the teachers in a role where a very hybrid skill set is required which is a combination of technical and non-technical skills. Further, we have also found that the teacher’s role and the teacher’s tasks change as the students develop their skill set during the first year until the end of the third year from a more teacher directed role to a more student-centred facilitator role.

This study explores tech students’ perceptions of social media’s usefulness during PBL group work. In contrast to much of the previous work, this study is not focused on effects; instead, it is aimed at determining the extent to which students perceived various social media platforms as useful within the context of their PBL group work. This study is based on 15 groups (45 tech students) enrolled at Aalborg University and uses the principles of problem-based learning. The study’s procedures included a semi-structured interview guide and a card sorting method. All participants in this study used social media for group coordination. Messenger, Skype, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Facebook were all used in dynamic, changeable, and different ways within groups for coordination. Moreover, if social media platforms were used for non-academic purposes, they were mostly perceived as not useful and distracting. However, if the social media platforms were perceived as useful, they tended to contain group-and project-relevant content. The various social media platforms were perceived differently and used for different purposes throughout the PBL stages, depending on the individuals, and their use was not persistent or variable due to positive, neutral or negative perceptions. It can also be concluded that real-time synchronous and collaborative platforms are important for facilitating students’ group work and projects. In addition, the students perceived that a strongly focused group with good group dynamics benefits more from using social media than does a more unfocused group with an excessively friendly attitude.

On a global scale, educational institutions are continuing to evolve the practice of teaching to provide the necessary skills and competencies for a modern world. There is widespread educational interest in adopting more experiential and collaboratively oriented pedagogies or what we term Experiential and Collaborative Learning (ECL). We use the term ECL as an overarching concept to capture a number of educational approaches or models, such as PBL, Inquiry-Based Learning or Reflective Practice-Based Learning. Despite the surge of interest in such educational approaches, assessment methods are still primarily based on a competitive and summative expression with a strong association to grading. Learning processes based on ECL are characterised by a responsive nature, which challenges the existing assessment methods. As learning processes change from something stationary to something that dynamically changes through analytical and reflective processes, it affects the way we assess learning outcomes. Therefore, there is a need for developing a new perspective on assessment activities to ensure that teaching methods applied for, e.g. PBL, are aligned with proper assessment methods. Also, the methods used for assessment can accommodate a focus on both process and elements of content. In this conceptual paper, we present a theoretical model for approaching authentic assessment with a specific focus on ECL based teaching.

This paper suggests innovative tools for creating teaching methods. We are inspired by action research methods about how to bring societal challenges into the curriculum of higher education of tourism. How can we, as responsible educators and researchers, support our students in being not only critical thinkers but being able to position themselves as social agents of change? Our method is to push them (as well as ourselves) towards engaging actively in societal challenges rather than only provide critical analysis from a distance, i.e. within the walls of a university.The paper seeks to encourage undertaking a more open and sustained exchange of ideas on how teaching critical thinking and creativity can be conducted at present-day universities. We acknowledge universities and our role as facilitators as vital sites of socially activism-oriented engagements. This is aligned with the goal of quality in higher education in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) no 4, in which qualitative education is encouraged. Our paper explores how 18 Master students at ‘Tourism Studies’ at Aalborg University, campus Copenhagen (Denmark), co-create new spaces together with local Mexicans and indigenous peoples in Tulum (Mexico), including local authorities, whom all have an interest in turning cenotes/sinkholes, an existing tourism asset, into a sustainable tourism product.