Project based learning: Application to a research master subject of thermal engineering

Abstract

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) requires the student a more autonomous work. This autonomy is related to the outcome of the self-regulated learning process. The self-regulation involves a self-management skill set coping with any adverse contingency and entails the knowledge of the available abilities and the personal control to put in action those skills. The learning self-regulation serves as a critical process to develop learning to learn competences that enable to transform the mental aptitudes into academic competences. However, it is necessary to make modifications of the learning conditions to achieve it in an adequate way. Thus, the academic authorities should empower skills that facilitate autonomous learning as well as contribute with tools to the student proactivity. In this sense, the problem-based learning is an effective method to facilitate the acquisition of transversal competences. This didactic methodology may be performed in terms of individual or team-based-learning (TBL) that is necessary linked to a teaching-learning open system. An adaptation of the PBL to the thermal engineering studies, the project based learning model, was designed to the ‘Building Energetic Efficiency’ subject of the Research Master.