Towards Open-Source and Collaborative Project-Based Learning in Engineering Education: Situation, Resources and Challenges

Abstract

Several strategies have been proposed for the promotion of successful and sustainable project-based learning (PBL) activities, whose benefits for higher education institutions include: improvements in student learning outcome, given the more holistic learning environments that provide the complex implications of the engineering practice; the engagement of the community of professors, which get involved in a shared dreams environment and increase their mutual communication; the promotion of technological and research vocations and the enhanced interconnections between academia and industry derived from PBL experiences devoted to solving real societal and entrepreneurial challenges. The incorporation of collaborative creation or collaborative design methods and the use of open-source resources may provide additional benefits to this teaching-learning methodology, by helping to make these experiences more formative, more easily replicable, sustainable and cost-effective. In this study we concentrate on the promotion of active learning experiences linked to collaborative engineering and supported by open-source tools and resources. To this end, we analyze available resources for supporting educators inplanning and students in living open-source collaborative PBL (OSC-PBL) experiences. Then, a case of study linked to OSC-PBL in the biomedical engineering field is presented and examined. Finally, lessons learned and current challenges for the future success of these teaching-learning experiences are discussed.