Enhancing project-oriented learning by joining communities of practice and opening spaces for relatedness

Abstract

This article describes an extension to project-oriented learning to increase social construction of knowledge and learning. The focus is on: (a) maximising opportunities for students to share their knowledge with practitioners by joining communities of practice, and (b) increasing their intrinsic motivation by creating conditions for student's relatedness. The case study considers a last year capstone course in Mechanical Engineering. The work addresses innovative practices of active learning and beyond project-oriented learning through: (a) the development of a web-based decision support system, (b) meetings between the communities of students, maintenance engineers and academics, and (c) new off-campus group instances. The author hypothesises that this multi-modal approach increases deep learning and social impact of the educational process. Surveys to the actors support a successful achievement of the educational goals. The methodology can easily be extended to further improve the learning process.

Service Learning in an Undergraduate Social Work Research Course

“…Students were particularly excited that agencies intended to use these research plans and that their work could potentially assist clients served by these agencies: Students felt that the SL project was a valuable way to learn about agency-based research and that the end product would be of use to the agency. Students who present their work to external audiences, such as a community agency, work harder than when work is presented internally as homework submitted to the instructor (Harder, 2010;Pascual, 2010). Students felt the work they were doing was important.…”

The use of motivation theory in engineering education research: a systematic review of literature

“…As an example of an engineering education study using SDT (and the category of reasons for engagement), Pascual (2010) used SDT in combination with communities of practice (Wenger 1998a) to examine student motivation for learning in a specific innovative engineering course context. They found that relatedness was an important factor as students became members of communities of practice and engaged in extended active learning activities.…”

SimProgramming: uma abordagem motivacional para a aprendizagem de alunos intermediários de programação

“…Um trabalho relacionado com a pesquisa aqui apresentada [Pascual 2010] descreve uma extensão da aprendizagem baseada em projetos para aumentar o desenvolvimento social do conhecimento e da aprendizagem. Sua abordagem visa maximizar as oportunidades dos alunos de compartilharem o conhecimento com outros programadores, a fim de unir a academia e as comunidades de prática.…”