Course assesment

Dear my colleagues,

The first semester (October-February) in the University of the Basque Country is finishing. Today, 20th of January is the last day of classes. Next week exam period will start and it will last for three weeks.

On Monday, student (13) and myself we assessed the course. I started, point out the objectives of the PBL methodology used in this course according to the course objectives. Then I exposed my conclusions (those I wrote in my previous post).

Afterwards, I asked the students to write in a white paper their assessment. They asked me they would like to do it in groups. I accepted. Student discussed effectively in groups and wrote their conclusions (15th minutes). Then, each group exposed them.

The main assessment points are:

• They found the PBL activity (Combined Cycle Power Plant Design) as very suitable for the knowledge and skills they need to learn and develop. They found that suppression of lectures and learning from a problem solving makes them deeper learning. They found they learn to face up to a problem with few initial data and then to search for useful information.
• Some student said that the subjects teached by lectures and solving well defined problems, they can not learn deeply enough, and suggest to convert in PBL.
• They found other PBL short cases help them to connect the real word’s energy issues with the subject (Engineering Thermodynamics). Some of them feel that one hour of discussion every fortnight about the subjects of PBL short cases if very good to get used to speak to an audience. Conversely, some other they would prefer to use that time for training in well defined problem solving.
• As every group should assess the project (Combined Cycle Power Plant Design) of another group (they should identify strong point as well as the point can be improved), they found this is a good exercise to learn from each other. But most of them do not like to give an evaluation mark.
• All the students agree that the time used in training in well defined problem solving should be higher. They criticize that teacher has solved few model problems in the blackboard.

I feed very satisfied with the student assessment. As I told in my previous post I found that solving only one problem, they are able to find or learn what relationship between variables is and to be aware of the real values. Then they are able to self-evaluate the final results and to find if something is wrong and to identify it. In my experience so far, I could check that solving a list of well defined problems they do not get this skills.

It is true that the time for “well defined problem solving” has been reduced but not the number of solved model problems. 50% of the listed problems are solved step by step in two books, and it is marked in each of the problems. Theh, class time should be used for solving the difficulties they found in the rest of the problems, as I always insisted them, because training in problem solving is oneself work/learning. Furthermore, they have the right of personal tutorial (6 h /week) to as for help. Anyway I will reconsider the time and the selection of model problems to solve in the blackboard.

¿Any suggestion?