Preparing engineering students for collaborative project-work:Piloting an online course on PBL and project management

MAREENE is an international Master programme on Reliability based structural MAintenance for marine Renewable ENErgy, delivered at Université de Nantes (France). This Master programme is a one-year programme that completes a first year to deliver a Master degree. It is developed in collaboration with Aalborg University (AAU), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering of the College of Engineering and Architecture of University College Dublin (UCD). The programme curriculum is problem-based and project-organised (PBL), where small groups of students solve real and authentic problems within civil and marine engineering through a project of two ECTS per semester. Besides the project, students also have online courses, which provide technical knowledge and support their project work, namely in PBL and project management. Université de Nantes is running for the first time a Master engineering programme with a PBL curriculum, where both students and staff lack, or have limited, experience on how to manage and organise learning in a PBL environment. Therefore, the MAREENE programme includes a 15 h, fully online course on PBL and project management as part of the project module, the overall goal of which is to provide students the knowledge and tools needed to develop the skills and competences to carry out a problem-based project successfully. The course is student-centred, problem-oriented and focused on students’ experiences and needs. This paper describes the framework of the PBL online course, itslearning principles and evaluation. The course evaluation targeted students who participate in the course, and their responses were collected through a questionnaire distributed through Moodle. Results indicate that course structure, materials and assignments support student learning and have met their expectations from a moderate to a large extent. In addition, they also consider the course and topics addressed relevant, including for future projects they will be involvedin. MAREENE is an international Master programme on Reliability based structural MAintenance for marine Renewable ENErgy, delivered at Université de Nantes (France). This Master programme is a one-year programme that completes a first year to deliver a Master degree. It is developed in collaboration with Aalborg University (AAU), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the School of Mechanical & Materials Engineering of the College of Engineering and Architecture of University College Dublin (UCD). The programme curriculum is problem-based and project-organised (PBL), where small groups of students solve real and authentic problems within civil and marine engineering through a project of two ECTS per semester. Besides the project, students also have online courses, which provide technical knowledge and support their project work, namely in PBL and project management. Université de Nantes is running for the first time a Master engineering programme with a PBL curriculum, where both students and staff lack, or have limited, experience on how to manage and organise learning in a PBL environment. Therefore, the MAREENE programme includes a 15 h, fully online course on PBL and project management as part of the project module, the overall goal of which is to provide students the knowledge and tools needed to develop the skills and competences to carry out a problem-based project successfully. The course is student-centred, problem-oriented and focused on students’ experiences and needs. This paper describes the framework of the PBL online course, itslearning principles and evaluation. The course evaluation targeted students who participate in the course, and their responses were collected through a questionnaire distributed through Moodle. Results indicate that course structure, materials and assignments support student learning and have met their expectations from a moderate to a large extent. In addition, they also consider the course and topics addressed relevant, including for future projects they will be involved in.