PBL in a University-Business cooperation in Engineering and Operations Management Master: challenges and opportunities

The active learning methodology Project Based Learning (PBL) has as main objectives: to involve and motivate students to learn actively while solving an open-ended problem, promoting their creativity, and stimulating their critical thinking Students are organized in teams and are challenged to solve real-world problems during a semester integrating contents from all or some of the courses, involving or not an external entity (e.g., a company), through large interdisciplinary project development. This paper discuss a pedagogical experience undertaken for the first time in the Engineering and Operations Management (EOM) Master that applied PBL in partnership with companies. The PBL involved five companies, six courses, six teachers, and 36 students organized in five teams. From the EOM courses of first semester, four integrated the project, two compulsory and two electives courses. Each student select two courses. This means that a team could include members attending different courses. The coordination responsibility was of the Integrated Project course. For each team, four milestones were planned, each with one or more deliverables, to accomplish the project objectives. This paper describes the PBL planning and organization, results, challenges, and improvement opportunities. Students' feedback was gathered through an online questionnaire composed of a total of 61 questions. From these, 58 are based on a five-point Likert scale and the last three are open-ended questions. A quantitative analysis was performed based on 23 (64%) respondents. At the end of the semester, additional students' feedback was also collected through a focus group. Moreover, a qualitative analysis was done based on the first-person narratives of four companies' supervisors. The main findings highlighted students' overall satisfaction, despite the many challenges faced. Nevertheless, less positive aspects were also identified and seen as improvement opportunities for the next edition.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020