A Learning Science Foundation for Project-Based Learning in Engineering

Seeking to connect the cognitive sciences and teaching faculty, Susan Ambrose and her co-authors recently published, How Learning Works: 7 Research Based Principles for Smart Teaching.[1] Ambrose and her co-authors observed that cognitive and educational psychology was making great strides advancing the science of learning, but little of this science was impacting college classrooms. Ambrose et al. sought to connect effective teaching practices and cognitive psychology's advances in our understanding of learning and bring that science of learning into others' classrooms. Their book distills seven principles from the learning sciences, and then instantiates those principles with concrete teaching practices.

We find in Ambrose's work a substantiation of project-based learning in engineering, providing a foundation for understanding why this pedagogy works. Specifically, problem-based learning works because it naturally embodies all seven research-based principles of effective teaching and learning outlined by Ambrose and her co-authors. Appropriately executed, project-based learning implicitly complies with our students' ability to learn. We elaborate on four of Ambrose's seven findings and describe how the documented practices of emerging from the CDIO initiative instantiate those principles. Furthermore, Ambrose's principles suggest criteria by which we might justifiably identify best practices in project-based learning. This assessment may help promote and facilitate adoption of fine-tuned educational strategies within the CDIO framework. Furthermore, this will shift the arguments for project-based learning from appeals to intuition and trial-and-error to a more rigorous foundation built from the teaching and learning sciences.