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effectiveness of Problem Based Learning Instructions on knowledge and skills of stu
#1

effectiveness of Problem Based Learning Instructions on
knowledge and skills of students of Undergraduate program

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In order for engineers to retain a competitive edge, they need to be provided with up-to-date knowledge and skills, the ability to solve problems, visualize, and the attitude to adapt to change. Consequently, engineering education is undergoing change, and the literature suggests those engineering skills, attitudes, and experiences enrich the engineering experience to include greater understanding of visualization, problem solving and other engineering skills. The professional organizations and literature [8] [10] suggest we produce workers who are creative problem solvers and we use innovative methods, such as PBL, to allow engineering students to develop problem-solving and teaming skills for open-ended design and solving real life problems. Within the literature of Albanese and Mitchell [11], we see widespread support about the benefits of PBL, its motivational effects on students working open-ended problems and its beneficial long-term effects on lifelong learning. Success in an engineering curriculum has long relied on the ability to creatively solve problems [12]. However, there is little information on the use and application of PBL methods to engineering studies. There is even less information on the scholarly application of this method to real-life problems in engineering disciplines and its use as a stimulation tool. Aside from the industrial and educational need for change, the literature indicates many critical engineering reports and engineering professionals who seek active change in engineering education. One of the latest to emerge is Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC2000) [13], which focuses on outcomes assessment for demonstrating program success, and is endorsed by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). The EC2000 document attempts to encourage accountability and continuous improvement in engineering education, to which many 2 and 4 year schools already seek active change in engineering studies, especially since the mid 1950s when Dr. Grinter of VPI chaired the 44-member American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Committee that produced the Grinter Report (ASEE, 1955/1994) [14], to become the essential blueprint for engineering science revolution in USA. Similar to EC2000, a reprint of the Grinter Report (ASEE, 1955/1994) [14] revisited many recommendations for engineering design and other elements in a curriculum to include "development of student creativity, use of open-ended problems, development and use of modern design theory and methodology, formulation of design problem statements and specifications, consideration of alternative solutions, feasibility considerations, production processes, concurrent engineering design, and detailed system descriptions" [14]. To place a slant on real-life factors and constraints, it also considered "realistic constraints, as economic factors, safety, reliability, aesthetics, ethics, and social 5 impacts". The report was intended to address immediate concerns and have a short term impact on the engineering profession, and the report did initially suggest sweeping changes in the engineering curriculum to include problem-solving, active-learning, and visualization techniques. It also promoted engineering education to establish the foundation of successful practice, effective teaching, and relevant research in engineering design. Later, the National Research Council [19], in its Improving Engineering Design report also mirrored this change. Furthermore, to improve engineering education, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Carl Perkins Act, and the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) have also approved the revision of engineering programs by funding educational grants for creative problem solving, engineering design, or applied design education or curricula. Some results of this type of work are outlined by Barr and Juric [15], Kenley [16], and Miller and Bertoline [17]. Consequently, EC 2000 is just one of the latest recommendations to emerge in a long list of ongoing engineering education improvements seeking active change in engineering education. The reform of engineering education is not restricted to 2 and 4 year schools. Through the Perkins Act and other educational curriculum grants, reform has trickled down to high school to allow problem-centered learning methods. For instance, over 5 years, from 1996 to 2001, the NC Department of Public Instruction, NC State University, and Wake Forest University Medical School hosted statewide workshops in Problem Based Learning [18]. The two universities used a Perkins and a 5-year NSF grant to further induce and elevate science, technology, architecture, and mechanical engineering 6 teachers and North Carolina high-school teachers and college instructors and with problem based learning classroom skills. In the PBL workshops, teachers were taught facilitation skills, case study creation, and PBL assessment and rubrics. As new facilitators, they were taught to relinquish control while maintaining the quality and integrity of the learning environment. To model characteristics of lifelong learners, they were taught that helping students find solutions are the keys not the right answers. The process of learning this facilitation skill enabled teachers to empower students with ownership of learning, so there would be no more "guess what I'm thinking in class." Teachers were taught to encourage different pathways for different students and to allow them to seek answers. Teachers were encouraged to use prompt-style questions and suggestions in order to facilitate but not direct the class, which included: What would be helpful to do now? Is that a learning issue? How do you know that? What does that have to do with the problem? Does everyone agree with that statement? To sum up, the professional organizations and literature suggest we must produce innovative workers who are creative problem solvers and use innovative methods, such as problem-based learning, to allow engineering students to fully develop their problem-solving and teaming skills and be more creative with open-ended design and graphic solutions. Most engineering problem solving is accomplished via team and group work, so why not use a problem-based education approach?

Need of Study:

Issue 1: Till now there have been many studies on pedagogical practices in higher education and published results are available on effects of pedagogy viz. collaborative learning, Project based learning and Problem based learning on knowledge gain, skill gain and attitudes of students of both medical and engineering streams. These studies can be categorized based on University, Students, Pedagogy, Courses taught and the selection of measured parameters and the variety of independent parameters. So far, the studies have been carried out on different courses in engineering. Sometimes favorable results and sometimes equivalent results have been found in all these studies.
Issue 2: Cognitive style and Gender are taken as independent parameters, as various studies suggested that the process of learning and problem solving have some relation, whatsoever, with these two parameters. However, the correlation of these two parameters with pedagogy has never been studied.
Issue 3: So far the study of PBL has been limited to a particular teacher designing a strategy to deliver the course curriculum using PBL and then measuring the effects. In this particular study, three courses are designed once and are then delivered twice, by two different facilitators, to two different batches of students. This way, the theory of extrapolation can be applied with greater confidence.
Issue 4: The step by step description of what is happening in the PBL class and then relating the results drawn to the statement analysis is a unique feature, which gives a real insight into the class and how the relevant discussion amongst various participants - students and facilitator is. Issue 5: So far the practicing PBL places are autonomous Universities and Institutes, worldwide. A lot of freedom rests with the teacher and the University to decide the curriculum and the evaluation strategy. The Institute, where this study was conducted is one of the many self aided institutes, where the affiliating University decides the curriculum and even the pedagogy to a large extent. By this study, a unique and maiden effort to integrate PBL to traditional evaluation strategy has been initiated and implemented.
Issue 6: All the PBL experiments carried out so far have no jurisdiction, in any of the Indian Universities or Institutes (affiliated or autonomous). Thus, Indian engineering students Community though very large (approximately 20 lac students), has never even experienced PBL in a structured manner.
Issue 7: Technical Education in India is already reeling under acute shortage of competitive faculty. Even those, who are available, have seldom experienced or made their students experience cooperative learning during undergraduate studies. Even those, who have rarely done so, have rarely experimented with PBL, inspite of its positive results, worldwide. This study thus, can trigger a series of such experiments in ECE and other branches of engineering (with particular reference to India) so that widespread results are available and can be extrapolated in students.

Design of Study:

The study was aimed at studying the effectiveness of Problem Based Learning Instructions on knowledge and skills of students of Undergraduate program in Electronics and Communication Engineering at Chitkara Institute of Engineering and technology in three subjects - Analog Electronics (AE), Digital Electronics (DE) and Pulse Switching Circuits (PDSC). The Institute is affiliated to Punjab Technical University, Punjab. The experiment was carried out in above three subjects over a period of four semesters, as described in the layout of sample base.

The factorial design of 2x2x2 was used because it permits to evaluate the combined effect of two or more independent variables simultaneously. The layout of the factorial design is given in figure


Sample Base (402 @ 67 students/subject/teacher *3 subjects *2
teachers)
CG (Traditional Method)(P2)
i
Field Independent (C1)
1
Male (G1)
Male (G1)
M(Ga1le)

Field Dependent (C2)
Male

(a) The teaching pedagogy for the Traditional thread continued to be "traditional" using Lecture, Tutorial and Practical classes, with the teacher as "Sage on Stage". The teacher made the Lecture plan and Lab Plan - an hour wise, lecture wise, lab wise schedule, for delivery of whole syllabus, right from knowledge level to the application level. She also delivered the course in accordance to the same. The quasi-open-ended-problems, as given in the section VI, were changed into more closed-ended-ones and given to the traditional group for practice, in the tutorial classes. These problems were given in addition to many other analytical questions, which the students practiced in tutorial classes. The lecture and tutorial sessions were interlaced throughout the semester. The content delivery in the Lecture classes was one way - from teacher to students. However the students were allowed to work in groups, practice analytical problems and discuss the issues in Tutorial classes. The practice session for a particular topic was always after the concept was delivered and understood by the students in the Lecture classes. The practical sessions in the Lab classes had objectives, again, determined by the prescribed study scheme and syllabus of the affiliating University and the teacher. All in all, there was a clear demarcation in the Lecture, Tutorial and Lab classes in terms of the delivery of content, what the students performed and the Learning Objectives.
(b) For the PBL thread, there was no structured plan in terms of delivery of content. However, the teacher - here, termed as Facilitator - prepared a complete set of Technical Nodes and Learning Objectives. Chapter 1 deals with the aspects of engineering education in India vis-a-vis engineering education worldwide. The theory of Problem Solving and concept of cognition are introduced. The historical aspect of PBL is elaborated and principal research questions are framed.
The facilitator designed open - ended Technical Problems (TPs) and got them authenticated by a group of senior teachers. While designing TPs, care was taken that the scope was broad enough so that the students could achieve all the Technical Nodes and Learning Objectives in the conceptual, while attempting to solve them.
Students grappled with these fuzzy Technical Problems (TPs) - one at a time, and tried to understand the scope, issues and concepts stemming from or inherent in the TP before attempting to identify the learning points that would guide them towards the formulation of an eventual response (in the form of a theory, hypothesis, solution or argument).
There was no demarcation of Lecture, Tutorial or Practical classes and the total time available for the course was divided into several two hour PBL-sessions. The students developed an understanding and also found the solution to the TP while traversing the conceptual space, covering the technical nodes and also learned to work in teams. The role of the teacher was changed from the "content-delivery-man" to a facilitator. The students worked on their Technical Problems, trying to find out one of the many possible solutions, determining and achieving their own theoretical and practical Learning Objectives. The teacher remained and worked as "guide-by-side", truly taking up the role of a facilitator. She carefully monitored each and every step of the groups and remained aware of the progress made by the groups. At times, when the facilitator felt that all the students encountered the same kind of bottleneck at some point, the facilitator even delivered a structured lecture or called upon all the students to perform the same experiment, so that they all can proceed further.
Moodle software was used for online submission of assignments and presentations for both the threads and also to extend the discussion among students even beyond the class room.

Analysis of Data:

The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as Mean, Median and Mode, SD, skewness and kurtosis. To draw statistical inferences, and to test hypotheses, three-way ANOVA was employed. The p-value analysis showed that pedagogy significantly contributes to knowledge and skill gains of the students. It also showed that the females responded better to pedagogy for their knowledge gain. There was no effect of cognitive styles on the dependent parameters. The Reaction scale form was used to measure the attitude of the students to pedagogy. PBL students showed very positive attitude towards learning. The statistical results achieved are tabulated in Chapter 5.

Conclusions:

1. The students taught through PBL achieved better scores in Knowledge and Skill tests in the three subjects of Analog Electronics, Digital Electronics and PDSC.
2. The students in the PBL class also showed better attitudes towards learning and utilizing the class time more effectively.
3. There was no significant interaction in cognitive style and Pedagogy
4. There was a significant interaction in the gender and pedagogy. The females responded better to PBL than the males.
5. There was no significant interaction between pedagogy, gender and cognitive styles
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