Project-Based Learning Application in Higher Education: Student Experiences and Perspectives

Literature Review

Learning methodologies that are active and centered on the student are concepts that accentuate the learning process instead of the teaching process. Active learning is defined by Bonwell & Eison (1991) as “instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing”. These types of activities create excitement in the classroom to make learning something natural for the students (Alves et al., 2018). Several authors, in particular Vygotsky (1986), defend the theory of social constructivism, where the ground idea is that concepts and the construction of meaning are learned by students interacting together. On the other hand, Kolmos (1996) also argues that learning is an active process of investigation, and is an outcome of the interest, curiosity, and experience of the learner (Alves et al., 2019).

PBL is an example of this kind of methodology. PBL is a methodology that has been used for years. It has its roots in learning-by-doing ideas that were developed in the first half of the 20th century, initially by Kilpatrick in 1918 and Dewey in 1996 (Lima et al., 2012). According to Dewey, learn from experience means “to make backward and forward connections between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes trying; and experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction-discovery of the connection of things” (Dewey, 1916).

Another definition for PBL was given by Adderley in (1975). According to them, PBL has five different phases/aspects: (i) resolution of a problem that can be proposed by the students themselves, though it is not required to be; (ii) initiative to solve the problem comes from the students and requires integration of a range of educational activities; (iii) delivery of a final product, coherent with the initial problem; (iv) the solution for the problem will usually be handled as a project and, most of the time, it is time-consuming; (v) changing the role of the instructor from an authoritarian position to a consultant position (Pereira et al., 2017).