Problem-based learning in teaching electricity economics

Problem-based learning is one of the latest educational methods. The aim of this paper was to illustrate how PBL has been used in electric power engineering education and what kinds of experiences have been reached. In the department of Electric Power Engineering at Tampere University of Technology (TUT), PBL was used for three different case exercises in the "Energy Economics" course. The problems of the cases were designed to correspond to real-life situations. To encourage the students to solve the cases they were given activity points to examination. The analysis of questionnaires, which were filled in by students, indicates that students liked problem-based learning as a teaching method and that PBL is worth further development.