Using different taxonomies to formulate learning outcomes to innovate engineering curriculum towards PBL: perspectives from engineering educators

Designing modern engineering curricula requires integrating the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and generic employability skills, focusing on student-centred learning, and explicitly including learning outcomes about knowledge, skills, and competences. There is the need thus for tools that help
teachers and boards to address these demands and assure quality in educational processes and outcomes when revising and changing curricula. Higher education institutions have been developing different quality assurance strategies. However, from a teaching and learning practice perspective, there are concerns on whether such strategies guarantee curriculum coherence, especially in terms of ensuring progression and alignment between learning outcomes and more student-centred learning activities, such as problembased learning (PBL).

This paper discusses the above coherence issues by addressing the following question: What are strengths and weaknesses in using taxonomies to analyse learning outcomes as mean to promote curriculum innovation and PBL implementation?

The paper takes the point of departure on formulation of learning outcomes using Bloom’s revised, SOLO, and Feisel-Schmitz Technical taxonomies and in which ways they support engineering educators in redesign their courses towards PBL. More specifically, the manuscript discusses: a) the similarities and
differences between different taxonomies; b) strengths and weaknesses of taxonomies to analyse learning outcomes for engineering education and PBL, taking the point of departure four engineering courses as case examples. We categorise different courses' learning outcomes using the referred taxonomies, and reflect on their suitability for categorising and formulating the learning outcomes in engineering education. The results enable discussing the suitability of the taxonomies in more generic settings, their limitations in formulating learning outcomes relevant for engineering practice, namely non-cognitive learning outcomes and transversal skills, and making recommendations towards improved curriculum alignment in engineering education for PBL.