Problem and Project-Based Learning at Aalborg

Abstract

Aalborg University has grown out of a certain educational mindset based on reform pedagogy and German critical theory back in the 1970s. Aalborg University has developed problem and project based learning as the core principles for education at a systemic level. In this chapter, the history and contemporary principles and the educational practices are presented.

1 Educational Mindset

Aalborg University has grown out of a certain educational mindset based on reform pedagogy and the German critical theory back in the 1970s. It was in the period where several new universities were established around the world, such as Maastricht University, McMaster University, Bremen University, Linköping University, Twente University, and many more (Kolmos & de Graaff, 2014).

In Denmark, Roskilde University in 1972 and Aalborg University in 1974 were founded as part of a critical political discourse carried by a strong student movement which wanted to relate the academic knowledge to society and at time especially for a more socially oriented society. In particular, the universities strove to have a closer relationship with the surrounding society by including societal problems in the curriculum.

Although the Danish tradition of a problem- and project-based (PBL) philosophy might have started out with the intention of societal transition, it has been embedded and transformed into a much more market-oriented agenda. Already from the very beginning of Aalborg University’s history, there was strong support from surrounding society, and in particular from companies. Since the beginning, the university has grown from about 300 students in 1974 to more than 20,000 students. The PBL model is systematically practiced at all engineering and science programs and most of the humanities and social science programs. In medicine, the PBL model is very different from the rest of the university, as a case-based PBL model is applied.

In every curriculum, the three core factors will always be the academic teachers, the learning outcomes in the curriculum and the students, as outlined in Fig. 10.1, together with the AAU way of connecting those.

Fig. 10.1

Learning triangle in a PBL perspective

The original philosophy beyond the Danish PBL universities added five sets of learning principles which can be summarized as.

• Societal relevance meaning that the problem-orientation should relate to societal problems.

• Participant directed learning indicating that students should be decision makers in their own learning process within the given framework of study regulations.

• Project-organized teams where students collaborate and work on projects.

• Exemplarity in the sense that the projects should be exemplary for overall learning goals which also embed a social imagination of transforming the society.

• New roles for academic staff from lecturing to facilitation of students’ learning.

These five principles are interrelated; however, the starting points for the PBL principles at Aalborg University are societal problems, which are analyzed and solved in project teams (Kolmos et al., 2004).

1.1 Societal Problems

To bring societal relevance and problems into a theoretical-oriented academia has been one of the core elements in the transformation of higher education during the last 50 years and it actually involves all the other principles. The societal problems will require a different way of approaching knowledge as it has to be related to reality, and learning is organized in analyzing and solving problems. Although problems can range from complex problems to narrower classroom and disciplinary problems, it will give a context for the learning and creates the starting point for the learning processes. This can create meaningfulness for the learner. The learning of control theory will become more meaningful if the students are to reduce a crane sway to improve safety in the working environment—or it is an optimization of a production line in order to save energy.

Societal problems can often be characterized as belonging to one of the SDGs and PBL can be seen as a pedagogy for mission-driven education. Identifying societal problems involves critical thinking which is described also in Chap. 4 and belongs to a critical discourse. Students get trained in analyzing why this is a problem and what is the problem?

In engineering, there might be too much distance between the technical knowledge (and the competencies expected to be learned) and the societal problems. The trick used is to narrow down the problem in an argued and explicit way, so that it can serve as a framework for continually revisiting the societal scope in the problem-solving process (Holgaard et al., 2017). Together with the intended learning outcomes of the educational program, the argued relevance for society also has implications for the problem-type addressed. The societal problem fields will include a lot of different problem types calling for different levels of abstraction and different academic lenses. Narrowing down the problem and the choice of problem type is a part of a negotiation and sense-making process for the teams of students.

1.2 Project Teams

It is project organized and team based as most of the authentic problems cannot be solved by the effort of only one person. The team-based and project organized aspect involves learning relevant competencies for collaboration and project management in diverse team formations (Spliid, 2011). These are often the competencies which are required by industry and society in general and have been embedded into most accreditation criteria for engineering education. Therefore, it has also been the most outspoken argument for applying PBL at both course and institutional level.

The project organization approach also adds both a focus on a co-constructed product in terms of an innovation, a project report, a device, or similar products which can be assessed. The product is to be understood as the analyses and the solving of the problem. The combination of learning process and the learning outcome in terms of the project can be seen in light of motivation as many students are driven by creation and the fact that they can be contributing with their project product to solve relevant problems.

Furthermore, the team-based aspect adds for the formation of individual and collective learning cultures. Most students find it difficult to collaborate. It can be difficulties in the social interaction and in the interpersonal cognitive understanding. For first year students, it is often challenging to collaborate and learn to manage the art of collaboration, and questions arise such as when do you say no and when do you add in to progressing the process. Students should also be able to position themselves within the group and point out how they can contribute to team efforts including both group performance and individual learning goals. This will create an identity formed by both the inner individual interests and the collaborative learning environment. This identity moves from what is good for me to how can I contribute to a common solution (Chen et al., 2020).

1.3 Exemplarity

Exemplarity is one of the principles explained in the Chap. 6 for selection of problems, methods, and content which have to be exemplary to the overall learning outcomes. There is no doubt that the students remember the learnings from projects more than the learnings they have gained from lectures (Kolmos & Holgaard, 2017). They are also using more time on the projects as the projects are most often chosen by the students, which creates ownership. The reason is of course that the students are actively working with the content more than passively receiving information through lectures. In a PBL curriculum, the learning outcomes in the projects are normally at a higher taxonomy level than the learning outcomes in the taught courses. Students are expected to gain deeper understanding and knowledge from their projects, and they have to learn how to search for knowledge themselves. Many courses at AAU are faculty-directed designed to integrate more narrow problems but also have integrated activities for active learning, and lecturing is more used to create overview and relate more stable knowledge constructs (Kolmos et al., 2004).

1.4 Participation

The principles of participant directed learning are an embedded part of working in project teams. The participant directed learning corresponds to a more recent concept of co-construction. If the students go to a company and have been asked to investigate a regulation problem at the end of the production line where products are packed, they will start by an analysis. When they start to analyze a system, they figure out that the problem cannot be solved by regulation as the problem in fact originates from the materials used. They learn to identify the relevant problems in their learning process. An example of the participant directed implications can also be that students working with acoustics bring in problems that they are aware of, like noise level in schools after removal of asbestos ceilings. With a personal relation to the problem, the students get even more motivated for learning and working with solutions (Zhou & Kolmos, 2013). Furthermore, critical thinking is enhanced as students have to consider the different interests related to the problem (Guerra & Holgaard, 2016).

1.5 Academic Staff

Learning to transform knowledge and competencies is a condition to train students in transforming their knowledge and competencies from one project to the next project. The project organization to address problems and situations will be different, and the project teams will vary in number of members, the scope of the problems, and the project management process. Therefore, the transformation of knowledge, skills, and competencies, as defined by the European Qualification Framework, are important to address. Transformation processes are not one to one processes and not linear or necessarily logical. It is part of the learning that takes place but is hard to articulate (Servant-Miklos & Spliid, 2017).

Therefore, the role of the teacher gets important as this is not just to communicate scientific knowledge, but indeed to facilitate learning of both scientific knowledge, the application of knowledge for analyses and problem solving and, the learning of how students transform their generic competencies from one project to another project situation. It does not really matter which concept is used to name the role, e.g., if the term used is a facilitator, advisor, or supervisor as the wording basically is defined by the cultural practice. What is important is the function which is to guide students and open up their mind to different scenarios in relation to both the product in terms of scientific content, the approach to analyzing and solving problems, and the process of which the students organize the learning individually and collaboratively.

This is a challenging part for academic staff who are used to be in a content mode. However, product and process are interweaved and one way to approach this function is also by facilitating transformation and activate exemplary learning by asking the ‘what if’ questions to the students to get the students to think in alternatives and to apply theories and methods learned in one case on another case.

Students need to learn the scientific knowledge in combination with analyses of and solutions to problems which to some extent will require a pragmatic approach and out of the box thinking before making decisions. It is basically to get the students to shift between convergent and divergent thinking and processing. That will also influence how the students learn to organize their collaboration and their project processes.

The functions and roles will depend very much on the type of project. Basically, there are narrow discipline projects, which are more faculty driven, and there are the more open problem projects which are more student driven and interdisciplinary oriented. In the first type of projects, teachers know the problem, the methodologies, and the results beforehand. In the last type of projects, there might be a lack of knowledge of both the problem and the results, but knowledge of the methodologies might be known, see Table 10.1.

Table 10.1 Faculty- and student-driven projects

The interaction with the students will be very different. In the teacher-driven projects, teachers do have an overview, know the directions, the tentative solutions and can facilitate the process of training the students’ transformation competencies with confidence but maybe also within more limited scopes. However, although the most of the methodologies and results might be known, the students might still come with new solutions. In the learner-driven processes, the teachers also participate in the inquiry processes. This is a process where the teacher helps out with methodologies and facilitates the transformation competencies much more in an interactive dialogue about what the students can do. These types of projects are increasingly important as there is an increase in the need for solving complex problems. Engineering students do have both types of projects, and the academics are trained in both types of interactions (Bertel et al., 2022).

This approach to teaching is based on the assumption that students are able to become responsible for their own learning. This might set high expectations as becoming drivers for your own learning is challenging. Research has indicated that when students are given the opportunities to decide on the problem, then they create ownership which increase the motivation for learning (Ghaemi & Potvin, 2020). However, even though the motivation factor might not be so easily handled, it is important to give students possibilities for directing their learning. Students might have been used to more spoon-feeding in high school. Therefore, there is a function in facilitating the students to make their own choices as part of their identity and personal growth. Often students just want one answer and act on that—please just tell us what to do and then we will. But the trick is to give them two or three possibilities to force them to think, argue, negotiate in the team, and make decisions. Which direction should they choose? In participant directed learning, it is about getting the students to decide (Kolmos et al., 2008).

2 Institutional PBL Approach

What is unique for the reform of two universities in Denmark, Roskilde, and Aalborg University, is that they were established as a new institutional and systemic approach more or less from scratch. Therefore, it was possible to create new interrelations among all the curriculum components. At Aalborg University, a semester approach was created contrary to a course approach with a high degree of flexibility qua the curriculum system with electives. In the Aalborg curriculum, the electives are primarily integrated in the students’ projects and one of the reasons why the participatory approach not only serve as a motivation for learning purpose, but indeed also has a specialization purpose.

The Aalborg PBL model for engineering education is well described in many publications analyzing the history and early PBL principles and how these have been unfolded in the curriculum, see for example (Kolmos et al., 2004). Furthermore, another institutional framing has been the emphasis on a research and evidence-based approach to PBL using the university as a living lab. At the institutional level, it has had crucial importance with this research-based approach to PBL, as this has been established as a dominant discourse grounded in both experience (practice) and conceptual frameworks (theory). The research environment also created a vision of change inspired, not only from the problems and potential solutions within the institution, but also the developments in various other engineering education institutions around the world (Bertel et al., 2021a).

2.1 Curriculum Structure

Originally, the curriculum was born with a coherent semester of 30 ECTS, where 1 ECTS corresponds to approx. 28 h of student work in the European Credit Transfer System. The 30 ECTS is composed of 15 ECTS project work, 7,5 ECTS project unit courses which were assessed through the project assessment, and 7,5 ECTS basic science courses with separate assessment. At the Faculty for Engineering and Science, this was changed in 2006 to three single courses of each 5 ECTS and with separate assessment, see Fig. 10.2.

Fig. 10.2

Semester structure at AAU

The reason for the change was a pressure from the subdisciplines in the taught courses as students had a tendency only to pay interest to the content if they were to apply it in their projects, and some students found that they were not accredited in the project exam for the knowledge they had gained in the project courses. The curriculum would be far too narrow and limited if the courses only have to correspond to the projects. The learning outcomes from the 15 ECTS projects are expected to be deep, whereas the taught courses are expected to give a more general educational foundation and overview of the subject. This also gives the project a solid knowledge based to be expanded in the projects and relates deep learning in the projects to a broader scientific understanding and approach.

2.2 AAU PBL Learning Principles

Around 2009, the Rector established an expertise group consisting of international and internal experts to development the core AAU PBL principles. International experts interviewed PBL researchers, staff, and students at Aalborg University to get a comprehensive view on the practices (Barge, 2010). At that time, the intention with this exercise was to become more explicit on the overall guiding PBL principles, across science and engineering, health science, humanities, and social science, that could serve as internal and external guidelines for PBL curriculum (Kolmos, 2013). Internally, this slowly became guiding principles for all curricula at Aalborg University. The principles came to serve as a framework in the accreditation of university programs, and later on, as the university was allowed to apply for institutional accreditation, the overall principles became even more important. In that sense, the degree of formal institutionalization has increased during the years from the establishment in 1974.

The AAU PBL principles have had a slightly change over the years, and in the current version, these have been structured under four headlines: principles, framework, practice, and support functions (University, 2015b) see Fig. 10.3.

Fig. 10.3

PBL principles at AAU

Integrating the PBL principles into the accreditation system the university furthermore institutionalized the principles by presenting an educational profile. This profile outlines problem-based project work, research-based education, collaboration, student-centered learning as core values. Furthermore, it targets the programs by presenting core attributes of the graduates from the university by stating that educational programs have to foster graduates who can work problem based, have a solid scientific knowledge platform, can collaborate, and work interdisciplinary. By this close relation to the accreditation process on the institutional level, all programs must provide evidence that the PBL principles are met and relate to the educational profile of the university.

2.3 Aalborg University Principles for Digitalization

As part of the Aalborg University strategy 2016–2021 ‘Knowledge for the world’ (University, 2015a), the use of IT in PBL was a set theme, and first steps were taken to integrate IT directly in the PBL model. To support this strategy, a cross-faculty center for digitally supported learning was established to contribute to the ongoing development of digitally supported forms of learning, especially in PBL, and assist lecturers and tutors in implementing these forms with inspiration from the flipped classroom. PBL researchers at Aalborg University have studied and explored different types of digital PBL environments as a part of a comprehensive study on PBL for the future (Bertel et al., 2021b). Several projects have been initiated since, among those a project to provide overall principles for digitalization in a PBL context.

Like other universities, staff and students at Aalborg University experienced a steep learning curve under the COVID-19 epidemic, and experiences showed both strengths and weaknesses of digitalization in a PBL environment. First of all, the flexibility of project work and students’ acquaintance with agile project management, combined with applications like Microsoft Teams, provided a solid ground for students to adapt new learning strategies (Lyngdorf et al., 2021). Students are used to adapting to new situations due to the PBL learning environment. We learned that students were creating digital project management systems by combining various software possibilities and unfortunately Facebook was the most often applied system for communication as this was what students were used to. However, the team communication and collaboration patterns were challenged by an increasing individualization of the project work, and there were a tendency to more conflicts among team members (Lyngdorf et al., 2021). Students are comfortable with the digitalization of the taught courses, but they prefer to have the opportunities to work face-to-face in the project teams. Digitalization in the context of problem-based project work is a specific focus in the Aalborg University strategy ‘Knowledge for the world II’ (2022–2026).

3 Variation in Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Projects

During the history of Aalborg University, several versions of interdisciplinary projects have been practiced, but most of the projects with primarily disciplinary learning outcomes. Recently, new reform for integration of STEM and social science and humanities (SSH) has been initiated. The educational programs are to include learning outcomes within a multi, inter, and transdisciplinary domain. This reform builds on a longer tradition at Aalborg University with a variation in interdisciplinary projects which are combining two dimensions: partly the team dimension covering size and number of teams working together on a problem, partly the knowledge dimension ranging from disciplinary to inter and transdisciplinary approaches.

Figure 10.4 outlines the different project types. It should be noted that the most widespread projects are the discipline projects. The five other project types are more randomly applied in different programs. It should also be noted that different concepts might be used to characterize the different types of projects. The point is not really to argue for a particular name for the project type, but to use a framing that makes sense within the institution, and to create a common language and overview of possibilities.

Fig. 10.4

Different types of projects

If we look at the dimension of single teams versus several teams, the project management and steering processes will be very different. It is much easier to organize the work for a team of 4–8 students in one team than for 4–8 student teams working on the same project. For the latter, the students learn coordination at different levels—both coordination within the single team and coordination with the other teams. It can be within a discipline, but also across several disciplines either in a narrow or a broad sense of interdisciplinarity. For mission-driven educations as some universities, among them Aalborg University, claim to be aiming at, it is necessary to educate candidates who have learned to work in a variation of working modes. This is not either/or—it is both/and.

At Aalborg University, the disciplinary project is the most widespread and the easiest to manage from a faculty point of view. For the rest of the project types, there are examples of these projects, but it is not compulsory that all students in engineering and science programs participate in such projects. The future requirement learning outcomes within multi, inter, and transdisciplinary domains can be addressed by other teaching and learning strategies. However, as team-based projects are a dominant learning philosophy it will be most natural to include and expand the problem-based projects. Therefore, Aalborg University is—in 2023—in a phase of experimenting with the rest of the project types to figure out what it takes to run these project types as an embedded part of curriculum offered to 20,000 students.

3.1 Disciplinary Projects

Disciplinary projects are the basic part of the curriculum at Aalborg University. These are designed to target specific learning objectives to enable students to become socialized into the discipline. If students, for example, must learn graph theory, the faculty must make sure that they tackle a problem in a field where it makes sense to use graph theory. This has traditionally been done by providing students with project catalogues that outline already existing problems that are suitable for the intended learning outcomes.

Following the PBL approach, disciplinary projects are contextualized and to do so students ‘borrow’ knowledge and methods from other disciplines. The degree of contextual focus depends on the learning objectives. During the first year of engineering programs at AAU, there is a specific focus on students learning to analyze and identify a problem from a societal point of view that can be narrowed down to a contribution from within the discipline. AAU has plenty of examples, e.g., of how students from various technical disciplines are applying sociological methods in their problem analysis or performing overall impact assessments of both current and potential solutions (Jamison et al., 2015).

Another way to characterize disciplinary projects relates to the flexibility of the curriculum. At undergraduate level students are building fundamental skills related to their discipline and thereby the intended learning outcomes can be rather detailed, and the students can be steered toward a specific solution space designed to obtain specific technical skills. It is at times more a solution in search of problems than a problem in search of a solution. However, in the later semesters, the students become much more active in moving their mindset from a potential solution to a problem field with different applications, different user groups, different cultures, etc. In this sense, students learn how to make their own project catalogues.

3.2 Domain Projects

Domain projects bring together students from different educational programs working within the same epistemological field and drawing on the same sphere of knowledge. In engineering education, this means that the team brings together students from different, yet similar, engineering disciplines. In the engineering program, this can take the form of an elective or a compulsory project related to general engineering, e.g., an engineering design project. It might be a stand-alone mini-project integrated in the curriculum or a more extended part of the program, e.g., a common curriculum at the first year across disciplines.

At AAU, these types of projects have moved from being institutionalized by a domain specific study board at the first year to a more collaborative mode across different engineering programs related to study boards within departments. As an example, graduating engineers within urban, energy, or environmental planning from Aalborg University build upon a corresponding Bachelor with a shared curriculum focusing on the engineering planning domain. An example of a domain specific program is sustainable cities integrating energy and urban planning.

As such, domain projects are rather narrow in their interdisciplinary approach as the engineering domain is typically divided into subdomains with even more epistemological similarities. However, the domain projects have an important role in letting students form their own professional identity. In the above example related to engineering in the field of planning, students might start their bachelor with the intent of becoming and urban planner but end up choosing a specialization within energy planning due to their engagement with different subdomains.

3.3 Mixed Micro-Projects

Mixed micro-projects are projects that brings individual students from different disciplines together to co-construct a product in a short period of time. The overarching learning outcome is not as much to validate or qualify a product; it is more about getting students to experience close interdisciplinary collaboration and learning in a co-construction process. Today, there are very few mixed micro approaches in projects as well as in courses. The issue with this project type is the fact that Aalborg University does not have a widespread elective curriculum, and it has been hard to get it formally acknowledge in the formal curriculum.

If students should learn to collaborate at a deeper level, then this project type is needed, and it occurs in periodical experiments. One example is an event where students worked in two groups at a large Danish company to address authentic complex problems outline by the company. The event was structured as a Hackathon where the students from engineering and social science for three days worked with problem identification, problem analysis, and finalizing with a pitch competition presenting their findings (Routhe et al., 2022).

3.4 Interteam Projects

The interteam project is still a project type within the program, but in contrast to the disciplinary project students collaborate across groups. Interteam projects occur in bigger courses or clusters of subdisciplinary courses. The interteam project is characterized by a number of project teams working on the same or complementary elements (work packages) within the same discipline, e.g., software engineering.

Interteam projects are and have always been less common at Aalborg University than disciplinary projects. Thereby, there is not an established tradition for such projects, and the integration into the formal curricula is rare. This project type has thereby developed by initiatives from below, seeing the opportunity in groups working together to address the same problem by different problem-solving strategies, or combine teams to cover different roles in a product development project.

The GIRAF project is one example of such project type at Aalborg University where student groups are working on development of an APP for kids with autism, and they need to understand the how autism will affect cognitive functions and especially how they can develop the app (Graham, 2022). At production and mechanical engineering, there are other examples such as projects centered around production development, where student groups are working together to optimize prototypes.

3.5 System Projects

In spring 2021, the Engineering Faculty at AAU launched a new project concept called leadENG. The aim was to let first-year students experience and work together in a narrower interdisciplinary setting to prepare them for working across engineering, humanities, and social science. The leadENG projects start at the second semester, and during spring 2021, several student groups were working on development of an electric car. They have a device to work collaboratively on and organize the development as work packages for system development.

During the spring 22 semester, they have expanded the number of projects and students are working on system projects comparable to the electric car, which means that the starting point is a wish to create a particular technology or a solution to a more or less well-defined problem. The second round of leadENG furthermore offered students the opportunity to work on the prototype from the first round to develop a small electric car (version 2). Challenges with version-1 from spring 21 include weight and driving comfort. Furthermore, it is desired that the version will be made modular. Seven groups participated: two from Energy, five from Material and Production.

Another project from the second round of leadENG is the Floating Vertical Axis Windmill. The project deals with the design/development of a prototype of a floating vertical turbine. The location of the mill could be the Limfjorden or one of the lakes at the campus. Nine teams were participating: two from Material and Production, five from Energy, one from general engineering, and one from civil engineering. Another project was high temperature stone bearing with a Stirling Engine connected. Two teams were working on this project: 1 from Material and Production and 1 from Energy.

By introducing a narrower interdisciplinary project structure, the intention is to offer students the opportunity to develop their collaborative, problem-oriented and project management skills, and competencies further in a network of teams. The coordination across the project teams provides added value to the project management competencies that moves beyond a single team (Winther et al., 2022).

3.6 Interdisciplinary M-Projects

The M-projects relates to at least two types of projects, the megaproject being of large scale, and the mission-driven project being broad in scope.

At Aalborg University, the megaproject was introduced into engineering education in 2019. The term ‘megaproject’ covers large, long term, and highly complex interdisciplinary projects. Megaprojects are normally characterized by large investments, a high degree of commitment in the development and implementation phase, and a considerable number of economic resources, mostly provided by public funds. Infrastructure projects in cities, logistics related to high-speed trains, aircraft and airports, space technologies, and renewable energy systems are typical examples of megaprojects. Furthermore, megaprojects have a longitude that calls for foresight. With complex problems, duration and risks of a megaproject follow collaborative complexity especially on an organizational level, and a long-lasting impact on the economy, the environment, and society (Priemus et al., 2008).

The mission-driven education including the SDGs in education requires new teaching and learning methodologies and megaprojects was seen to be an answer in an educational setting, to frame the interaction of students from humanities, social science, health, engineering, and science to work together in a meaningful way. One example of megaprojects is to work on handling waste. More specifically, it can be waste in private households, or it can be waste at the university, or at a more general level in the municipality. Student teams from environmental management, biotechnology, communication, and architecture can be working on the same problem from each their angle. Environmental management will investigate the environmental impacts of the waste management system, biotechnology on handling biomass waste in big cities, student from communication might focus on cognitive understandings and visuals information for the citizens and architecture students might consider the design of waste boxes. Many more disciplines could be working with the same challenge. During spring 22, there is a megaproject on Blue Denmark at Aalborg University, where student project groups are working on biodiversity in the Limfjord and Energy Islands.

There is huge potential in megaprojects, but also some barriers in the introduction of such (Bertel et al., 2022). First and foremost, as students feel insecure about entering this new type of projects. What could be more meaningful than analyzing and solving the complex challenges we are facing and will face in the future, one could ask. For some students, it is however still considered safest to stay within the comfort zone of the discipline, and in this disciplinary view they might even argue that contextualization will be enough.

There are many constrains in the megaprojects—first, the curricula still have disciplinary foci. Consequently, the problem design approach is closest to the disciplinary project view. Students want a ‘catalogue’ to be sure of what they are buying into by choosing this elective, as they still must comply with the study regulation within their program. Furthermore, like the leadENG project, the starting point is typically more a solution in search of problems than the other way around. Following the example from above—why are we handling waste instead of trying to avoid waste?

Waste is the problem, and we must consider what is considered as waste and also why, when, where it is a problem and for whom. However, this cross-cutting problem analysis becomes even more complex as fundamentally different world views of a problem are in play and the decision-making process thereby becomes hard to carry out and coordinate across group. In the first iteration of megaprojects at Aalborg University, the choice has therefore been to accept that the boundary object between the groups is more of a theme.

The analysis of the how different problems and different solutions come together and are mutually dependent on each other likewise is difficult to fit into a curriculum with a rather fixed semester structure. In one semester, it is hard to live up to such ambitions. After the first iteration of megaprojects, it has therefore been chosen to lower the ambition as students are only expected to gain insight in multiple perspectives of solving a similar problem. Furthermore, as megaprojects are electives it is hard to predict which kind of disciplines will be represented; thereby, it is hard to use complex real-life problems as the starting point as the most obvious solution might point to considerably other disciplinary interactions than available among those who signed up. It is a question of how ‘mega’ it can become in an educational context. Teams of students cannot call a private consultant when in-house competencies are lacking.

Whereas the ambition of a large-scale impact in a megaproject might be questionable in an educational setting, the mission-driven approach taken in the Aalborg University strategy from 2022 to 2016 inspired by (Mazzucato, 2018) offers a framework for relating different projects to a common mission. In doing so, interdisciplinary collaboration between groups addressing the same mission will be enhanced. The actual implementation and implication of the mission-driven approach to projects is however to be further explored at the institutional level.

In sum, as Aalborg University is practicing a semester approach and not an elective course system, it is more difficult to build in electives where students from different programs are working together in one project. Therefore, we rarely see the interdisciplinary projects with students from a broad range of disciplines working together in one single team. However, specific activities are established with companies as problem owners and end users, e.g., by the use of hackathons pedagogy or other types of workshops. The new initiative has been taken at the institutional level for linking STEM and SSH. This initiative is part of the future mission-driven education where students learn to work across boundaries between disciplines and cultures.

4 Fostering Generic PBL Competencies in the Curriculum

PBL embraces new ways of learning and the cores is to let students work on authentic problems in project teams, and experience the process of identifying, analyzing and formulating problems, collaborating with other team members, faculty staff and external stakeholders, organize the work and structure the project from beginning to its end (Graham, 2012, 2018; Kolmos & de Graaff, 2014; Kolmos et al., 2020).

At the two engineering faculties (ENG and TECH) at Aalborg University, intended learning outcomes for PBL competencies have been formulated explicitly in the curriculum and there has been a process of facilitating the study boards and program leaders in how they could define the PBL competencies. The initiative was organized by the PBL Academy with help from the UNESCO Aalborg PBL Centre. Four types of competencies were identified partly by research and partly by practitioner experiences from curriculum development which is further described in Chap. 7. These are (1) problem oriented, (2) interpersonal, (3) structural, and (4) meta-cognitive (Holgaard et al., 2019).

The first three competencies are within PBL, as they all represent relations within a problem-based project including students’ interactions with the problem, the people, and the structures of the problem. The problem covers the ability to identify and analyze complex problems like the SDGs with a sociocultural and environmental mindset. The problem is narrowed down to a problem which can be solved within the semester and within the educational setting, which can be disciplinary or interdisciplinary. The interpersonal domain is characterized by the collaborative aspects, which can be influenced by digital, cultural, and personal communication patterns, and where students need to learn how to handle these dimensions in a constructive way. The structural aspects cover project management, knowledge management, leadership, and establishment of partnerships.

Figure 10.5 presents the frame of reference used to inspire and structure the dialogue of PBL competencies. With this starting point, staff and students create their own list of PBL competencies. For staff this has been done in a curriculum development perspective, for students this is done to clarify personal PBL competencies.

Fig. 10.5

PBL domains and meta-competency

As illustrated in Fig. 10.5, there the meta-competencies are a process of observing, reflecting, conceptualizing and develop the above mentioned first-order competencies. It is about creating attention and awareness to the mental maps navigating our relations and interactions in the problem-based project. Meta-competencies are needed, and it is about developing and changing through types of reflection as well as being aware of one's own learning and competency development.

The reflection on the domain specific PBL competencies starts by the observation of practice. This part is facilitated by linking and comparing experiences from practice together with theoretical framing. There is a constant iteration between the practice and the meta-cognitive dimension.

What is new at Aalborg University is the progression of the PBL competencies to improve and continuously develop generic competencies (Holgaard & Kolmos, 2019). Progression can be understood as continuity and interaction or sameness and difference. Continuity or sameness refers to the way past experiences will influence current experiences and learning happens in a continuum of circles. Progression appears when students build on past experiences in addressing new and different situations and interaction adds another perspective referring to the context of learning.

Thereby, students should not only be provided with possibilities to experience a variation of problems, project types and collaborative settings, they should also be facilitated to reflect on the experiences and critically question the relations between actions and situations, to develop the practices based on these observations together with theoretical inputs and be able to transfer these experiences and improvements to personal as well as professional attributes. These attributes however should not stay implicit, they should be made explicit and communicated to align expectations and optimize collaboration patterns in future work relations. Studies of PBL progression at Aalborg University (Holgaard & Kolmos, 2019) have shown that students after the first semester have difficulties conceptualizing and articulating their PBL competencies when these are not continuously reflected in theories.

At Aalborg University, the students have to submit a PBL competency profile based their experiences and theoretical reflection. In this way, students are supported in understanding and practicing the cross-cutting PBL principles from the very beginning at a 5 ECTS course in the first semester of their bachelor. During the study the experience from project work is complemented with workshops (at least 3 during the bachelor program) to support specific intended learning outcomes related to PBL and keep up the momentum and attention to the importance of ongoing reflection on the profession of PBL competencies.

At the second semester of the master study, all students have to hand in a PBL competency profile. Conceptualization of PBL competencies enables a conscious and qualified development of individual PBL competencies, and it promotes visibility and synergy in professional collaborative relationships. Competency profiles can supplement a CV, give a richer picture of a person's competencies, and highlight special positions of strength. Students are facilitated to make their PBL profile based on a guide to make a PBL competency profile (Holgaard & Kolmos, 2019) and a 3-h workshop presenting complementing competency frameworks. Each student gets feedback on their PBL competency profile with the core purpose of initiating further development in PBL competencies in the last part of the study. The guide as well as the workshops is carried out by use of inquiry-based learning techniques, e.g., providing a list of questions to facilitating reflection and transfer (Table 10.2). The most important transfer to facilitate is from personal experiences, of being in a PBL environment, to explicit personal and professional attributes outlining generic PBL.

Table 10.2 Facilitating questions to activate personal reflections and structured peer-interviews (in the workshop) to clarify personal PBL competencies

5 Faculty and Staff Development

Faculty and staff development at Aalborg University is organized in a cross-faculty learning lab having a mandatory academic course for assistant professors as its primary activity. Other activities are open for faculty and staff, including introductory courses, brush-up courses and ad hoc activities. Besides, the activities organized by the faculty development unit Learning Lab which is an umbrella organization for all faculties. The engineering faculties at Aalborg University are supported by the Aalborg PBL Centre for Engineering Science and Sustainability under the auspices of UNESCO (UCPBL). The point is to ensure close relation between educational research and practice on the one hand and ensure cross-faculty development of the overall educational profile and PBL principles at a systemic level.

The pedagogical model for educating faculty and staff follows the same PBL format as the ordinary educational activities at the university. As an example, the pedagogical development for assistant professors combines courses and project work. The program includes five obligatory courses and three electives. The obligatory courses are provided in a flipped format with online resources and readings to be synthesized and discussed among peers at a following seminar/workshop ($1/2$-1 day). Assistant professors in the course are assigned with a peer-group for ongoing discussion, peer-observations, and peer-feedback. Furthermore, each assistant profession is assigned two supervisors, where one supervisor is from the UCPBL, and the one supervisor represents the academic field of the discipline. Thereby, the participants are acquainted with pedagogy at different levels of abstraction, across faculties and practice in direct relation to the programs they are teaching. This unifies three perspectives grounded in fundamental educational research, engineering education research, and teaching practice.

The assistant professors are challenged by applying the project phases and are to make a problem analysis addressing their potential improvement areas and in this problem field they argue for the choice of a problem. They formulate the problem, use course content and supplementing resources to outline a potential solution; they set up a pedagogical experiment and point out the criteria for success and invite peers and supervisors to formatively assess the outcome. In some cases, such experiments have even formed the basis for publishing. Although most participants choose to carry out their project alone, there are also examples of participants going together to compare and combine experiences in a gathered report.

6 Conclusion

Problem and project-based learning (PBL) offers a framework to enhance student agency as well as a mission-driven approach to learning. Students analyze, formulate, and propose solutions to real-life problems in the context of a larger societal mission such as sustainable development. PBL is a pedagogical approach with emphasis on societal relevance, exemplarity, participant directed learning, and project organized teams. Students go beyond collaboration; they co-construct and learn to handle the mutual interdependence in a team by aligning their project management approach to the problem at hand and the people involved.

Staff facilitate students to work with different types of problems and project types to prepare them for the variation of challenges they will face as future professionals. Students learn how to reflect on the problem-based learning process as a platform for developing the way they critically approach a problem, the way they collaborate and the way they develop themselves as professionals in a lifelong learning perspective. Along the same line, university leaders increasingly direct attention to students’ development of generic competencies to work across disciplinary boundaries and address the increasing complexity of real-life problems.

The Aalborg University case also shows that even for a well-established PBL university, offering a systemic framework for complex problem solving, it is a considerable challenge to create a curriculum that emphasizes the increasing variations in engineering practice and makes room for interdisciplinary collaboration across programs. But each system will stiffen and become more instrumental if not there is a continuous development and the development of a systemic PBL institution is as hard as at any other institution. Due to the increasing complexity of the educational systems in their own sense, cross-institutional collaborations thereby become ever more important for learning how we can improve our responses to the urgent challenges we have in the international society.