Ten Years Evaluating CBL in Aerospace Engineering Education
The Emerald Handbook of Challenge Based Learning
ISBN: 978-1-80117-491-6, eISBN: 978-1-80117-490-9
Publication date: 8 August 2022
Abstract
Since 2009, different challenge-based learning (CBL) activities have been implemented at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), with a shared objective: provide the students a learning experience that covers the acquisition of technical knowledge, soft skills, and other generic competences, while bringing them closer to the current technologies and industry. The shared background of these activities is the participation of Master's students of aerospace engineering in the preliminary design of a space mission. During the 18/19 academic year, the UPM participated in the 2018 ESA Concurrent Engineering Challenge (ESA CEC), where the students complemented their technical knowledge with dedicated training in Concurrent Engineering and learnt how ESA assesses the feasibility of real space missions. This experience further motivated the organization of the UPM CEC, which was first executed in the 19/20 academic year (and is expected to be carried out in future courses). After a decade implementing CBL, different research methodologies and instruments have been used to evaluate its impact on different aspects of the learning process. In this chapter, we describe the main CBL activities performed, focusing on the instruments used to evaluate them. We draw attention to the main advantages and disadvantages of implementing CBL from a learning perspective, as well as the associated impact in the student's motivation and student–teacher relationship. In many cases, different teaching scenarios are assessed, thus making it possible to compare CBL against traditional methods.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by UPM under Innovative Education Projects No. IE10011007, IE01002, IE12_13-14002, IE13_14-14002, and IE1718.1403. The authors want to thank the students and teachers for their collaboration in the surveys. Additionally, the authors would like to thank the experts in Spacecraft Systems Engineering from Sener Aeroespacial for their support during the CBL experiences. Finally, we would like to thank ESA and the ESA Academy for the leadership and support provided throughout the 2018 ESA CEC experience.
Citation
Sánchez, P.S., López-Fernández, D. and González, V.L. (2022), "Ten Years Evaluating CBL in Aerospace Engineering Education", Vilalta-Perdomo, E., Membrillo-Hernández, J., Michel-Villarreal, R., Lakshmi, G. and Martínez-Acosta, M. (Ed.) The Emerald Handbook of Challenge Based Learning, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 177-197. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-490-920221008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022 Pablo Salgado Sánchez, Daniel López-Fernández and Victoria Lapuerta González. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited