Does increasing student activity and reducing lecturing improve learning outcome in courses?

Aalborg University has used Problem Based Learning since 1974. The primary model is big projects (15 ECTS) each semester solved in student groups. The rest of the study time the student follow courses where exercises is solved together in the students groups to enhance peer learning in courses.
Traditionally courses have been 50% lecturing and 50% exercises. As an experiment it was decided to change that in the autumn 2013 trying to activate the students more by decreasing the lecturing and use more time and effort on exercises followed up by a reflective dialogue with the students about lessons learnt.
The setup of the traditional and the new version of the course is explained and the effects of the change analyzed by comparing two cohorts of first semester Software Engineering and Computer Science students. The course is aimed at improving the potential of freshmen students project work helping them to develop their skills in cooperation, learning and project management. After the semester each student group write a process analysis where they reflect on these issues and come up with ideas to improve their performance in the next project.
The effect of the changes in the course is analyzed by comparing both the written Process Analysis and individual answers from the students to relevant exam questions taken from a written exam of the course. The results show that less lecturing doesn’t decrease the student’s skills in the subjects and more exercises and reflections don’t improve the skills either.