Interdisciplinary PBL methodologies in engineering education and work – InterPBL

Inter-PBL will contribute to the development of innovative educational models ‒ nationally as well as internationally – with the aim of educating engineers to work proactively and interactively in an interdisciplinary work environment in order to deal with the increasing complexity of engineering and contribute to a sustainable development of society. For that purpose, Inter-PBL will develop curriculum models for students’ learning of interdisciplinary generic competences in a PBL curriculum based on case studies on 1) new curriculum practices in interdisciplinary projects where the students are working on sustainability problems across educational programs, 2) interdisciplinary projects in companies, and 3) transdisciplinary projects with universities and companies working on common problems.

The goal is to develop:
• theory, methods, and tools for collaboration processes in a variety of interdisciplinary projects in education, with inspiration from good practices in companies.
• theory, methods, and tools on the learning of PBL competences in interdisciplinary projects and the learning of meta-competences for transfer of learning.
• curriculum models for enhancing the quality of existing PBL models addressing interdisciplinarity, and for international and national inspiration.

Inter-PBL contributes with new knowledge on interdisciplinary collaboration in student teams and in companies based on analyses of cases in both education and in companies. Inter-PBL also contributes with new knowledge on how meta-reflection may be essential for the development of generic PBL competences. The meta-competences are necessary in order to participate in complex and interdisciplinary project processes in companies and education. Finally, Inter-PBL will develop curriculum models to achieve these competences.

In order to participate in professional interdisciplinary work, it is important that students have experienced the work processes in educational interdisciplinary projects. Further, reflection on the practice experiences will facilitate the students’ learning and the transformation of interdisciplinary competences.

The Inter-PBL is funded by Poul Due Jensen Foundation and Aalborg University and part of the Aalborg PBL Centre.