Active learning in the University of South Australia

The authors analyse the justification, placing, validity and degree of success of some of their innovations in intra-mural experiential learning, in the light of their own theoretical understanding of the reasons for engaging in experience based methodologies for engineering education. These include: problem based learning for teams of first year students; student-managed investigations, seminars and peer assessment of papers in place of didactic teaching in mainstream second year subjects; practically based teaching in third year subjects; problem based learning for final year elective subjects; and team projects for industry clients. Evaluation has demonstrated high levels of student satisfaction in most instances. Students believe taking charge of their own learning is highly relevant to their preparation for the engineering profession. An exception was the attempt to engage first year students in medium scale, real life problem based learning from the outset. It is obvious in retrospect that neither secondary-educated students nor the university are adequately prepared for self-learning, problem based approaches.