What is so special about this approach?
Project-based learning is about approaching a complex problem that requires skills from different courses. The problem can usually only be solved by a group. So this teaching form promotes both individual and social skills that are of vital importance in the working world.
Are there any other “trends” in the development of curriculum?
“Trends” might not be the right word, but the considerations are moving in a similar direction in a completely revamped Bachelor’s degree course for civil engineers: the people behind the Geospatial Engineering course intend to specifically promote interdisciplinary skills, and to do so throughout all classes. We hope to see results from this initiative that could also be of interest for other study programmes.
What triggers the revision of a curriculum?
That varies quite a lot. In general, degree courses change over time because the subjects of research shift, for example as a result of professors retiring. Or consider all the technological development. This also affects teaching of course, and the coherence of a degree course can suffer. We therefore also have projects simply designed to analyse existing curricula in their entirety.
How do you do that?
We use various instruments in such analyses. They might be conventional workshops that we conduct with the lecturers and students, or also with the actual decision makers. And we also use more modern evaluation methods, such as rating conferences. To check how skills in a degree programme are structured, we have the programme-planning software LOOOP (Learning Opportunities, Objectives and Outcomes Platform). It was developed by the Charité in Berlin, and proved very useful in the development of new Bachelor’s degree programme in medicine. Using LOOOP we can show how much the individual courses contribute to the qualification by “mapping” them on a catalogue of skills. We now also use this tool to analyse existing degree courses.
And how many curricula in total are being revised?
At the moment we’re overseeing about a dozen larger development projects. Of these, four are connected to a degree programme initiative. That means that they receive financial support from the Rector’s Innovedum funds.
Are new degree courses also included?
Yes, electrical engineers and physicists are currently working urgently on a completely new Master’s degree programme for quantum engineering. It is to start in autumn 2019 and a quantum engineering laboratory is planned, among other things, in which project-based work can be done.