Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 531 de 957
reported higher mean scores in these areas at the beginning of the semester than students
in the PBL course, perhaps attesting to the hypothesis that these students may have
already experienced the positive effects that come with such student-centered
environments. The non-significant results may reflect a ceiling effect due to
instrumentation characteristics.
An unexpected significantly lower mean score was reported by students in the PjBL for the
importance and value they placed on the course from pre to post-semester (task value).
We found this unexpected because in the hours of audio-taped class and homework
sessions, students appeared highly engaged. One explanation for this finding may be
related to the elective aspect of the course. Another might be the focus on projects that
might not be entirely relevant to all engineering fields represented in the group of
students. However, focus group questioning revealed that the statements in the MSLQ
pertaining to “task value” might not have captured the students’ experience in the course
so their responses might not be a true estimate of the value they placed on the course.
Between-group differences. Students in the PBL course reported significantly higher
scores in task value, extrinsic motivation, rehearsal, and organization; whereas students in
the PjBL course reported significantly higher scores in effort regulation and the amount of
perceived autonomy support from the instructor. The differences in self-regulated
behaviours might be best explained by considering that PBL provides the scaffold to PjBL
(Barron et al., 1998). Students in the two courses started out with different expectations
about what they would experience over the coming weeks. For the students in the PBL
course, the abrupt transition to the more open format of this pedagogy might have
resulted in higher reports for them in these areas. Further, the specific content knowledge
outcome expectations of the PBL course might be responsible for higher reported levels in
extrinsic motivation and rehearsal. Students in the PjBL course were veterans with regard
to open format pedagogies but the fact that this failure analysis course utilized very illdefined
problems may explain the higher levels of effort regulation relative to the students
in the PBL course. The perception of greater autonomy support by PjBL students may also
be an artefact of familiarity with pedagogical structure. The PBL students experienced for
the first time the “sink or swim” feeling that students often report when they are in such
non-traditional environments and may not have appreciated the types of support offered
by their instructor.
Recommendations
Engineering educators should consider the types of learning behaviours and attitudes they
would like to help develop within their students and then consider what kinds of
pedagogies would be most helpful in getting those results. The results of this study
indicate that even though these two pedagogies are often considered similar and may in
fact be points along a continuum, students reported different patterns of growth within
the courses and across the courses. Students may become accustomed to dealing with
ambiguity the more they are exposed to it and our measures of growth will need to be able
to gauge development of positive tendencies as a result. However, these findings do
suggest that as students are exposed to ill-defined problems in supportive learning
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011