Project Based Learning as an Active Learning Strategy in Engineering Education

Things done are better remembered than things that are just heard or seen. In Project based learning pedagogy, the course content is delivered by assigning problem statements pertaining to real life situations to a group of students. For the assessment and evaluation of the course, the students have to give a presentation and a demo of the solution for the given problem at the end of course. So the students get sufficient time to work on the solution for the given problem. However, the work of the students is regularly monitored which helps in refining the proposed solution, looking for alternative solutions etc. In the process of solving these problem statements, the students apply the knowledge they have gained in various courses they have undertaken. In this process, the problem solving skills and employability of the students is greatly enhanced. In this paper, the authors have implemented project based learning pedagogy for two third year courses in Instrumentation Engineering Curriculum. The paper describes the aptness of this teaching pedagogy for the selected courses, activity planning, formulation of problem statements, progress reviews, and feedback. Through this activity, the authors found out that technical and non-technical skills of the students were greatly enhanced. Technical skills like, Problem formulation, System designing, etc are developed among the students. Effective communication, working in a team, developing a multidisciplinary approach, finance related planning are some of the non-technical skills found to be cultivated among the students. This ultimately develops life learning ability among the students.