STAKEHOLDER EXPECTATIONS OF LEARNING IN FIRST-YEAR PROJECT-BASED COURSES

In the design of a curriculum, each course should have a well-understood role and relationship to the other courses, and clearly defined, student-centered objectives, stated in terms of learning outcomes for knowledge, skills and attitudinal outcomes [1]. The Report of the Task Force on Undergraduate Educational Commons [2] at MIT, which made recommendations to revamp the common educational experiences of our students, recommended an optional first year projectbased course. Currently, planning and pilots are being conducted of such a course. The authors conducted a survey to determine the degree of community consensus on the desired learning outcomes for a first year project-based experience. Project-based learning is built on an authentic issue or problem for which a solution is sought. Faculty identify problems that encompass the relevant concepts and principles, and then they design authentic tasks in which the thinking required is consistent with the thinking in a real world engineering setting. The task and setting reflect the complexity of engineering environments and encourage students to test their ideas against alternative views and contexts. The solution to the problem may include design-implement experiences. Projects provide opportunities for reflection on both the content learned and the learning process. While it is common to use project-based learning activities integrated within an existing discipline-based curriculum framework, some universities organize their entire curriculum around project-based experiences. In order to better understand the community view of the role of project-based learning in the first year, we chose to survey the principal stakeholders of such an offering, i.e. those students and faculty who have a significant stake in its outcome. Voluntary interviews were conducted with representatives of four faculty stakeholder groups: leaders of academic enterprises; leaders of undergraduate programs; those directly teaching similar courses; and members of the Task Force on Undergraduate Commons, Committee on Undergraduate Programs, and Committee on Curricula. The Task Force was an ad hoc group that met for two years, and delivered a report outlining a new vision for the shared experiences of MIT students. The other two standing committees deal with the policy and curricular oversight of the undergraduate education. In addition current seniors, newly arrived freshmen, and high school seniors interested in MIT were interviewed.