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xPBL: a Methodology for Managing PBL when Teaching Computing
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In order to exploit the benefits of PBL and mitigate the risk of failure when implementing it, the NEXT (iNnovative Educational eXperience in Technology) research group has been working on methods and tools focused on managing the PBL approach as applied to Computing. In this context, this article proposes a teaching and learning methodology based on PBL, called xPBL, consisting of elements that reinforce PBL principles, namely: real and relevant problems; a practical environment; an innovative and flexible curriculum; an authentic assessment process; close monitoring by technical tutors and process tutors, and finally, professional practitioners as teachers and tutors. Based on these elements, the paper describes the design of a PBL approach for a Design course, grounded on acquired knowledge of Design content and past PBL experiences in Software Engineering courses. This approach provides an insightful guide to implementing PBL from xPBL methodology, and provides instruments based on management techniques such as 5W2H (what, why, who, when, where, how and how much) and the production of artifacts to support the conception process of courses based on PBL.
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... Two main references are used to structure this study: 1) different approaches to teaching programming, according to (Costelloe, 2016) and; 2) a PBL (Problem Based Learning) methodology used to organize the report of results found, according to (Santos, Furtado, and Lins, 2014). We have chosen to use the Costelloe reference only because it is an indepth and detailed study of the main categories of innovative approaches to teaching programming, and therefore a source of references in itself. ...
... This study has used the PBL methodology elements as a theoretical background for analysing the results of the SLR. In Santos, Furtado, and Lins (2014), the authors propose a methodology for the implementation of PBL in Computing based on 5 manageable elements: 1) Problem, reflecting realism and complexity similar to real contexts; 2) Environment, related to the definition of an authentic learning environment that reflects the actual context of the professional market; 3) Human Capital, with evidence to the roles and responsibilities of the pedagogical team in the planning; 4) Content, as an essential part to support the theoretical basis of the problem solving process; and 5) Processes, for the adequacy of learning objectives and assessment processes inherent to the learning format in PBL. We will use these elements as reference in the analysis described in Section IV, particularly in the results of question RQ4. ...
... Some studies highlighted improvements in their learning environments, problems related to teaching methodology planning, and others commented on the culture change related to collaborative work. In order to facilitate the understanding of the mentioned challenges, we grouped them according to the elements of the methodology defined in (Santos, Furtado, and Lins, 2014), commented briefly in Section 2.2. The main challenges are shown in Table 4. Regarding the Problem element, some studies have highlighted the need for special care with the definition of time to perform tasks, which depending on its complexity, can overwhelm the student, as in the quote below: "Timing considerations are extremely important when planning an LSP activity that is supposed to fit a single class period. ...
One of the main challenges of computing education is the teaching of computer programming. Technical skills related to algorithm logic, programming language syntax, and computational platforms are required to program. In addition, several non-technical skills are required, enabling the student to understand and to interpret real problems, to work in groups, and to strive for effective and efficient solutions. To meet these challenges, innovative teaching methodologies have been applied in teaching programming, building learning environments that are more conducive to the development of these skills. In order to understand how these methodologies are being used, this work presents the result of a systematic literature review, motivated by the following research question: "What are the innovative teaching and learning approaches to programming, how are they applied and what are the main results of their application? In this study, we considered three digital libraries and found 24 primary studies, following the Kitchenham methodology. These studies were categorized into 6 groups and highlighted challenges related to the problems addressed, teaching environment, content, human capital involved, and assessment process. The studies also showed evidence of success cases, as well as open paths for new research.
... The xPBL is a methodology that aims to align methods and tools for managing the PBL approach to education in fields such as Computer Science, in order to ensure that the principles are respected in its adoption. It was officially defined and proposed in 2014, but researches that supported its creation only started in 2006 [1]. To ensure that PBL principles that go beyond its educational objectives are met, the methodology xPBL is based on five elements: (1) Problem; (2) Environment; (3) Content; (4) The human capital and (5) Process. ...
... The purpose is to illustrate, for those who carry out the planning, what kind of response is expected for each question. The artifact item refers to the field Output from the proposed guide in article [1], which defines the xPBL methodology. As well as in the guide, this item represents a suggestion of a planned aspect formalization or support tool during its implementation. ...
The PBL (Problem-Based Learning) methodology provides many benefits to those who use it in teaching. In this light, it is important to plan well when using this methodology, efficient to the purposes established by an educator, in a way to avoid those vital aspects to educational planning in the PBL approach that are neglected or forgotten. However, there is a lack of specific tools to help educators in the task of planning their teaching, specifically geared to the PBL approach. As an alternative to this problem, this paper proposes a tool consisting of a Canvas PBL and a set of cards intended to guide the planning of teaching in the PBL approach.
... PBL follows some principles such as (i) an authentic learning environment, simulating the situation found in the professional environment, (ii) the use of real problems as a learning object, and (iii) the monitoring of evaluation by continuous feedback [42]. Santos and colleagues [48] defined ten principles for the teaching of computing that founded a methodology called xPBL [49], as shown in Fig. 2. ...
In Computing Higher Education (CHE), the desired transformation of traditional teaching and learning methods, almost always based on the transmission of information and content-based curricula, has been the objective of several educational institutions that wish to combat students’ demotivation and dropout. Among successful approaches, Problem-Based Learning (PBL) stands out as one of the most effective and radical methods regarding pedagogical innovations. While the PBL implementation means a great opportunity to achieve better educational performance, it also represents many challenges that can only be managed if they are first known and understood. In this context, the motivation for this study comes from the following research question: “How to know if an institution at CHE is ready to implement the PBL?”. As a response, an institutional diagnostic model regarding the adoption of PBL is proposed. It conducted an opinion survey in two kinds of educational institutions: technical and academic ones. Thirty-eight technical educational institutions in computing answered this survey, involving 302 participants, and fifteen academic institutions, involving 20 participants. The results showed that the model reached its objective, allowing the identification of favorable, warning, and critical points regarding the adoption of PBL in these institutions. This study is an evolution of the results focusing only on technical institutions published at the CSEDU 2021 conference and conducted by the NEXT Research Group.
... PBL is a teaching approach that employs projects as pedagogical tools [9], and a teacher's role within a PBL class is not that of a lecturer but that of a mentor or instructor [10]. The PBL focus is on developing social, cognitive, and metacognitive capabilities through real-world motivated artifact-building tasks [11], [12], and not only by immersing students in professional practice environments, as occurs in supervised internships. ...
... PBL follows some principles such as an authentic learning environment and simulation of the situation found in the professional environment, the use of real problems as a learning object, the monitoring of evaluation by continuous feedback (Ribeiro, 2008). In (Santos et al., 2013), ten principles were defined for the teaching of Computing that founded a methodology called xPBL (Santos et al., 2014), as shown in Figure 1. The xPBL methodology defines five manageable elements for PBL planning: 1) Problem; 2) Learning Environment; 3) Human Capital, that includes students, pedagogical team and market partners; 4) Content, as a guide and support to solve problems; And 5) Processes, concerning educational objectives and assessment processes. ...
... PBL follows some principles such as an authentic learning environment and simulation of the situation found in the professional environment, the use of real problems as a learning object, the monitoring of evaluation by continuous feedback (Ribeiro, 2008). In (Santos et al., 2013), ten principles were defined for the teaching of Computing that founded a methodology called xPBL (Santos et al., 2014), as shown in Figure 1. The xPBL methodology defines five manageable elements for PBL planning: 1) Problem; 2) Learning Environment; 3) Human Capital, that includes students, pedagogical team and market partners; 4) Content, as a guide and support to solve problems; And 5) Processes, concerning educational objectives and assessment processes. ...
In Computing Higher Education (CHE), the desired transformation of traditional teaching and learning methods, almost always based on the transmission of information and content-based curricula, has been the objective of several educational institutions that wish to combat students' demotivation and dropout. Among successful approaches, Problem-Based Learning stands out as one of the most effective and radical methods regarding pedagogical innovations. While the implementation of the PBL means a great opportunity to achieve better educational performance, it also represents many challenges that can only be managed if they are first known and understood. In this context, the motivation for this study comes from the following research question: "How to know if an institution at CHE is ready to implement the PBL?". As a response, an institutional diagnostic model regarding the adoption of PBL is proposed. From an opinion survey with 38 technical educational institutions in computing, involving 302 participants, the results showed that the model reached its objective, allowing the identification of favorable, warning, and critical points regarding the adoption of PBL in these institutions.
... The studies were analyzed in order to answer the four research questions outlined in Section III-A. To facilitate the understanding, the PBL methodology defined in [PS50] was used to categorize the results of the questions RQ3 and RQ4. This methodology is composed of five elements: 1) Problem; 2) Learning Environment; 3) Human Capital, that includes students, pedagogical team and market partners; 4) Content, as guide and support to solve problems; And 5) Processes, concerning educational objectives and assessment processes. ...
Contribution: This article adds to the results of previous systematic mapping study by addressing a more ample context of problem-based learning (PBL) in computing education. Background: PBL is defined as an instructional method of constructivist teaching that uses real problems as a motivating element for learning. Although PBL was born in medical education, it has been used in computing education to facilitate the students' engagement and learning capacity, contributing to developing skills, such as teamwork, holistic vision, critical thinking, and solving problem. Considering that approach much more descriptive than prescriptive, it favors the implementation of diverse methodologies on its behalf.
Problem-Based Learning (PBL) tem sido uma boa alternativa para atender às necessidades educacionais da Computação. No entanto, faltam ferramentas digitais específicas para ajudar os educadores na tarefa de planejamento de ensino PBL. Como solução para esse problema, este artigo propõe a concepção de um sistema colaborativo orientado aos princípios PBL para o planejamento de ensino. Os resultados iniciais indicam um bom índice de aceitação da ferramenta.
Problem-based learning (PBL) is an approach that improves students' skills in problem solving. The application of PBL as an approach of teaching in a class requires students' presence; such constraint cannot be fulfilled by all students. Therefore, it is important to avoid this problem by implementing an online PBL environment where students are grouped remotely and work together to solve a problem proposed by the teacher. This will guide the learning process of the learners and can evaluate their solution. In reality, we can find members who do not really contribute to solve a problem. From this point of view, the teacher's evaluation will not be adequate to estimate the contribution of the learner in the solution of a given problem. Therefore, it is important to think of another way for assessing learners' solution. So, the challenge is to implement an online PBL environment and to propose a new method for assessing students. In this paper, the authors present their system called Problearn. The developed system allows students to solve problems remotely in small groups. Furthermore, the system evaluates each student based on his behavioral profiles during the problem-solving process. To do so, the system must keep track of different actions carried out by the students. This system has been tested by students of a computer science department where they achieved very good results.
The growing presence of the software in the products and services consumed daily by the society demands a level of completely dependent quality not only of technology, but of its development process and of the involved professionals. By focusing on the professionals responsible for quality assurance, as the Test Engineer, the skills and competences of these need to be developed on basis of a vision very critical and detailed of the problem. The Test Engineer needs to be an "explorer" of the solution, discovering hidden bugs and looking to elimination of defects of the applications. In this context, this article proposes an approach of teaching focuses on training of “test” discipline that make use of problem-based learning to develop real skills required, supported by processes of planning and continuous assessment, in a computer aided software factory. To prove the applicability of this proposal, an empirical study was developed with positive results in teaching the discipline of “exploratory testing”.
The continuous growth of the use of Information and Communication Technology in different sectors of the market calls out for software professionals with the qualifications needed to solve complex and diverse problems. Innovative teaching methodologies, such as the "Software Internship" model and PBL teaching approaches that are learner-centered and focus on bringing market reality to the learning environment, have been developed and implemented with a view to meeting this demand. However, the effectiveness of these methods cannot always be satisfactorily proved. Prompted by this, this paper proposes a model for assessing students based on real market practices while preserving the authenticity of the learning environment. To evaluate this model, a case study on skills training for software specialists for the Telecom market is discussed, and presents important results that show the applicability of the proposed model for teaching Software Engineering.
The increasing application of student-centered teaching approaches to solve real problems, driven by the market's demand for professionals with better skills, has prompted the use of PBL in different areas, including in Computing. However, since this represents a paradigm shift in education, its implementation is not always well understood, which adversely affects its effectiveness. Within this context, this paper puts forward a model for assessing the maturity of teaching processes under the PBL approach, the PBL-Test, with a view to identifying points for improvement. The concept of maturity is defined in terms of teaching processes adhering to PBL principles, taken from an analysis of the following authors: Savery & Duffy (1995), Barrows (2001) Peterson (1997) and Alessio (2004). With a view to validating the applicability of the model, an empirical study was conducted by applying the PBL-Test to three skills in the Computing area. Results showed that although the model has shown it needs further enhancement, it has already been possible to identify improvements in PBL teaching processes that clearly affect the effectiveness of the approach.
In computing courses, the teaching and learning approach normally emphasizes theoretical knowledge at the expense of practical knowledge. The major disadvantages of this approach are learners' lack of motivation during class and their quickly forgetting the knowledge they have acquired. With a view to overcoming these difficulties, Problem Based Learning (PBL), an institutional method of teaching, has been applied to teaching computing disciplines. Despite the growth of the practice of PBL in various disciplines of Computing, there is little evidence of its specific characteristics in this area, the effectiveness of different PBL methodological approaches, or of benefits and challenges encountered. In this context, this paper presents a systematic mapping study in order to identify studies which involve best practices when using the PBL method in Computing between 1997 and 2011, answering five research questions: “What are the main characteristics of PBL that support teaching in Computing?”; “What are the criteria for applying PBL effectively in this area?”; “How is the PBL methodology applied?”, “What are the advantages and benefits of applying PBL in Computing?” and, finally, “What are the main challenges about learning in PBL in Computing?”.
The increasing application of student-centered teaching approaches to solve real problems, driven by the market´s demand for professionals with better skills, has prompted the use of PBL in different areas, including in Computing. However, since this represents a paradigm shift in education, its implementation is not always well understood, which adversely affects its effectiveness. Within this context, this paper puts forward a model for assessing the maturity of teaching processes under the PBL approach, the PBL-Test, with a view to identifying points for improvement. The concept of maturity is defined in terms of teaching processes adhering to PBL principles, taken from an analysis of the following authors: Savery & Duffy (1995), Barrows (2001) Peterson (1997) and Alessio (2004). With a view to validating the applicability of the model, an empirical study was conducted by applying the PBL-Test to three skills in the Computing area. Results showed that although the model has shown it needs further enhancement, it has already been possible to identify improvements in PBL teaching processes that clearly affect the effectiveness of the approach.
Many graduate and professional programs include Problem Based Learning (PBL) as a mainstay in their curricula. For many undergraduate students, this is a change from a teacher-centered to a student-centered learning method. This study was undertaken to learn about perceptions and test performances of college students (N=116) enrolled in liberal education classes when PBL is used vs. traditional teaching methods. Results indicated students perceived traditional teacher-centered learning more favorably than student-centered PBL. Nevertheless, test scores were similar. Negative student perceptions about learning in PBL classes did not support either teacher observations of learning activity in the classroom or compromised test performances.
This paper proposes the yPBL learning methodology, based on the well-known PBL method and adapted to software engineering process by using the "y" methodology. The yPBL methodology is defined as a mapping between the roles and phases considered in PBL methodologies to the roles, iterations and phases considered in the "y" methodology. Moreover, the yPBL method includes different situations of active and passive learning roles not only for the students involved in a course but also for the instructors. Indeed, software engineering instructors face the same challenge of any software engineer and needs to continuously update their knowledge in software technologies. The yPBL method has been designed using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the various interactions points between the various process actors as well as the information to be exchanged during the synchronous and asynchronous learning process have been specified using this language. Finally, interesting preliminary results of the experience of using this methodology in the INSA of Toulouse are included in this paper.
The software test program (STP) is a cooperation between Motorola and the Center for Informatics of the Federal University of Pernambuco. It has been conceived with inspiration on the medical residency, adjusted to the software development practice. A software residency includes the formal teaching of the relevant concepts and deep practice, with specialization on some specific subject; here the focus is on software testing. The STP has been of great benefit to all parties involved.