Project Based Learning on Engineering: Foundations, Applications & Challenges (Education in a Competitive and Globalizing World)

There is a worldwide interest today in improving the quality of education. Improving teaching for a more professional world is necessary; in fact, the application of the European Higher Education has encouraged the use of methodologies increasing learning activity in recent years. One of the most popular active learning methods is project-based learning or problems based learning (PBL). Despite this methodology being developed over 30 years ago, it has shown to be one of the most suitable methodologies for obtaining meaningful learning. It also has the advantage of being combined with other modern learning techniques such as e-learning and m-learning. The relevance of this technique and a collaboration of personal experience have led to this book. This book contains three distinct parts. The first part will contain the basics of this PBL and a review of the literature of the last years. The second part will contain practical examples of successful implementations of PBL conducted in different universities. In the last part, novel implementations of PBL combined with different methods of distance learning will be exposed (ie: PBL combined with e-learning, PBL combined with synchronous classroom and PBL combined with m-learning). Finally, in the last chapter, the conclusions of this research are outlined.