The Development of Sustainable Engineering with PjBL during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Sustainable Engineering education must provide cyber-physical and distributed systems competencies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The COVID-19 pandemic caused profound impacts arising from a traditional on-site teaching model rupture and demanded distance learning for engineering students. In this context, we considered the following Research Questions (RQ): How can Project Based Learning (PjBL) be applied in hardware and software courses from the Engineering curriculum to foster practical activities during the COVID-19 pandemic? Is the student performance in the fully remote offering comparable to the face-to-face offering? (RQ1); Which Sustainable Development Goals are related to the Engineering students’ project themes? (RQ2). Regarding RQ1, we present how PjBL was applied in first-, third- and fifth-year Computer Engineering Courses to support 31 projects of 81 future engineers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Student grades in a Software Engineering course indicate no relevant differences between student performance in remote and face-to-face offerings. Regarding RQ2, most Computer Engineering students from the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo in 2020 and 2021 decided to create projects related to SDG 3—Good Health and Well-being, SDG 8—Decent Work and Economic Growth and SDG 11—Sustainable Cities and Communities. Most projects were related to health and well-being, which was an expected behavior according to how health issues were brought into highlight during the pandemic.

Scoping review methodology and its use to review online project-based learning in higher education, 2020-2023

“…The length of the studies indicated in the articles differed too: while some studies included online PBL as part of a semester course typically lasting 14-16 weeks, some only referred to the actual length of the implementation of online PBL (6-8 weeks). Hayashi et al (2023) reported on several courses implemented over the academic year 2020-2021. The remaining characteristics of studies are provided in Table 4 in Appendix C.…”

“…Second, some studies also referred to discipline-related specific tools, software, and applications or generic tools that were used to implement the content of the projects. Examples of this type included visualizations tools such as Java, Tableau, D3 (Beyer et al, 2021), Internet of Things (IoT) technologies (Baudin et al, 2022;Hayashi et al, 2023); Azure Notebooks (used for remote programming; Sakamaki et al, 2022), a virtual desktop infrastructure enabled by Citrix machine creation system which enables instructors to take control of students' virtual machines (Sola-Guirado et al, 2022), making use of the online virtual simulation experiment websites, employing bioinformatics tools (VSEARCH and MicrobiomeAnalyst) in order to analyze data (Sun et al, 2023), and the use of online platforms for creating multimedia videos or multimodal content (Canva and Powtoon; Poonpon, 2021).…”

“…Online Class Sessions. A number of studies (i.e., Beyer et al, 2021;Arantes do Amaral & Fregni, 2021;Guo et al, 2021;Hayashi et al, 2023;Sola-Guirado et al, 2022, Sun et al, 2023 referred to the availability of the instructor(s)/researchers(s) during online sessions with the participants, organized chiefly during synchronous class time slots, to provide some theoretical insights, discuss related texts and the activities as well as steps related to the projects, clarify instructions, answer questions, and/or provide feedback. While some of the procedures involved a clear time limit dedicated to this activity, followed by students' group work (e.g., Sola-Guirado et al, 2022, referred to dedicating 30 minutes to going over different specifications related to the projects and allowing students time afterwards to work on their projects; Beyer et al, 2021, stated that the teaching staff remained available for questions and feedback during classes; Guo et al, 2021, referred to teachers' answering questions about subject matter as well as reminding students of practical matters to be considered), other studies referred to organizing meetings whose sole purpose was to discuss and solve challenges and provide feedback (e.g., Arantes do Amaral & Fregni, 2021; Peng et al, 2022).…”

“…Technology-Related Assistance Throughout the Implementation of PBL. Two studies employed high-technology tools in order to implement PBL online (e.g., Baudin et al, 2022;Hayashi et al, 2023). The instructors in Baudin et al's (2022) study described how assistance with handling technological solutions was provided.…”

“…Peng et al (2022) also referred to the high motivation of the participants during the process, while Sola-Guirado et al (2022) highlighted the high satisfaction that the students felt about realizing their work. Hayashi et al (2023) noted that online PBL helped to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 as the students were able to engage in the content offered during the period of emergency remote teaching. Similarly, Baudin et al (2021) stated that there was no difference in terms of effectiveness between PBL implemented remotely or in face-to-face classes.…”