Ya Zhou, Yao Hu, Yuejin Zhao, Liquan Dong, Ming Liu, Lingqin Kong
Unlike traditional, teacher-led classroom activities, students often must organize their own work and manage their own time in a project-based class. Project-based instruction differs from traditional inquiry by its emphasis on students’ collaborative or individual artifact construction to represent what is being learned. It also gives students the opportunity to explore problems and challenges that have real-world applications, increasing the possibility of long-term retention of skills and concepts. Unlike traditional course in which gaining the professional knowledge is the highest priority, there are a lot of personal and interpersonal skills involved in a project-base course. In this paper, we would like to discuss one issue: What else can be learnt in a project-based course beyond knowledge?
The analysis and discussion are based on a 12-week-long project-based experimental course Optoelectronic Instrument Experiments (OIE), which is a lecture-lab course which aims to familiarize students with the principal ideas of optoelectronic apparatus design and train students to apply the knowledge to identifying, analyzing and solving problems in optoelectronic system construction. According to our experience and efforts on this course for nearly 10 years, we find that at least two attributes can be involved in a project-based course.
Self-awareness of their aptitude: Students from China are always intelligent but lack creativity. This is partially because of the reserved or implicit culture. In the traditional single assessment criterion education circumstance, students chase for the high marks even without knowing their interests or aptitudes. In OIE, we try to encourage the students to dig their aptitudes and help them prepare themselves for engineering-related jobs in the further, by which we called “Aptitude Digging Education”.
Teamwork in real engineering environment: Collaboration is one of the most treasured attributes for a qualified contemporary engineer. In order to work in modern team-based environments, students must develop the interpersonal skills of teamwork. However, teamwork in real engineering environment is not always like it is in a band. You will not always work with people who share the same interests and are at a similar competence level. There must be task assignment and benefit distribution. In OIE, we designed several strategies to expose the student to a real engineering environment and let them deal with it. Our purpose is to find a way to make student learn the interpersonal skill of working in team.
