Student Engagement in a Structured Problem-based Approach to Learning: a Heat Transfer Course in First Year Electronic Engineering

Problem-based Learning has been at the core of significant developments in engineering education in recent years. It refers to any learning environment in which the problem drives the learning. The problem is posed so that the students realize that they need to acquire some new knowledge before they can solve the problem. This paper presents an experience of a structured problem-based approach to teaching an introductory course on Heat Transfer in the first year of an Electronic Engineering graduate programme. A heat sink design problem is posed to students at the beginning of the module. Small groups of students have worked together in cooperative learning for ten weeks, the teacher being the coach and facilitator of the knowledge acquisition. Partial, not extensive written reports have been colleted weekly. Student's assessment of the learning environment has been measured. A list of recommendations is presented with a view to assist academics interested to adopt a similar approach. Index Terms problem-based learning, cooperative learning, engineering thermodynamics.