CONSTRUCTION OF GROUPS

A first challenge in the development of the projects was the construction of groups, initially for the first project, but which could continue in the following projects or not, according to the students’ choice. A form was assigned to the students for a self-assessment of their profile with some specific characteristics or abilities defined by them as primary, secondary, or tertiary. The assigned characteristics were liking for photos, videos, and editing; reading and research; computer skills; writing; hands-on work; and creativity. The students decided to divide themselves into groups (rather than a directed lottery based on the characteristics) and were instructed that each group should have all the attributes in the primary and secondary levels of its members, which could be modified if there was no such distribution. The number of members in the groups was between six and nine students (six to eight or seven to nine, depending on the class). The students chose the leader of each of the groups, which is good in terms of their valorization (Barreto et al., 2017) compared to a voluntary or teacher-chosen leader.

BIMESTER PLANNING

The planning of each project followed the structure presented in Figure 1, undergoing some specific adjustments due to calendar issues, science fair, etc. In some cases, with a tight schedule with fewer instructional days than usual, weeks 1 and 2 were condensed into one or week 9 of one project coincided with week 1 of the following project.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Figure 1 Bimester planning. 

At the beginning of each project, the students received the project’s anchor, a driving question, and a list of tasks they have to execute. In addition to this document, they had access to Moodle, a virtual platform that contained the semester schedule with the dates and themes of the WebQuests and the final delivery date, as well as bibliographies that could be useful along with internet research. Based on this material, the first deliverable was always a planning document that should contain the name of the leader, the secretary (responsible for communication with the teacher and group records), and other functions defined by themselves, in addition to a list of tasks to be executed throughout the project. The list should include the approximate date and the person responsible for each task. The functions were not individual, they could be formed by subgroups. Allowing students to organize their way of working, the roles to play in solving their own problems, and the resources to achieve their goals is one of the characteristics of PBL (Loyens, Magda, and Rikers, 2008).

The first group feedback was based on this planning, aiming to help students understand the complexity of the problem they would face, which content they would need to study and research, and how to organize themselves. This would also allow the teacher to evaluate, in addition to groupwork, the individual development of each student (Akili, 2011). Whenever students received feedback, they had the next class time to meet with the subject teacher and ask questions about the feedback and future activities. It is important that feedback is always very detailed (Strohfeldt and Khutoryanskaya, 2015). Small doubts could always be clarified in asynchronous appointments. The same dynamics occurred during the WebQuest feedback weeks. The WebQuests were generally two (possibly three) per project and they were presented to the students in the form of a text with an introduction to the specific item of the curriculum, contextualizing this content with the project itself and a research activity that should be fully completed, addressing all the main topics of the content. Given the possible difficulty of students in finding materials on technical subjects, bibliographies, videos, and websites were always made available as suggestions, but with an incentive to explore new sources of information. The level of detail and amount of information to be explored in the WebQuests were the responsibility of the groups, aiming at the development of critical and creative thinking, encouraging possible concern with their own learning (Casale, Kuri, and Silva, 2011).

The final stage of the project was an artifact that the students chose to develop in the form of a video presentation. Since the projects were industrial in nature, the presentations were geared towards the owners, managers, or someone in the industry to which the project applied (who, in general, did not have the technical knowledge and would need it to understand the proposal), giving a tone of formality and a need for technical detailing to the artifact.

The project evaluation was carried out through an evaluation rubric prepared at the beginning of the project, following the evaluation model proposed by Bender (2014). The group’s grades ranged from 1 to 10 and were assigned to four declared objectives, each worth 2.5 points and with four levels of objective fulfillment. The group grade corresponded to 60% of the average and the individual grade, based on the fulfillment of the planned activities for each member (or subgroup) and the perception of individual work development, when possible, 40%.

STUDENT’S PERCEPTION BEFORE THE METHODOLOGY CHANGE

Chart 2 presents some student responses regarding their perception of challenges, limitations, and potentialities they saw in remote learning at the beginning of the activities.

The student’s perception of the problems of remote learning were mainly related to organizational and motivational aspects, the environment to study, internet connection, lack of contact with peers and professors, and lack of proficiency for both professors and students to work with remote learning or DE. Almost all perceptions about remote learning were limitations. However, students found potentialities, such as their own organization, independence, flexibility, learning about computer use, and a sense of responsibility for themselves with this new challenge. In general, communication was the biggest challenge and limitation encountered by students. Chart 3 presents the students’ perception of PBL after the initial presentation of the method.

The students saw PBL as a great challenge, with prospects of being something difficult in their own words, but with the potential to stimulate characteristics such as teamwork, creativity, communication, involvement, and interest in the content, which were also seen as major sources of difficulties. Little or no rejection, which can occur if initial care is not taken to present the methodology (Ross et al., 2007), has been noted. Overall, we noticed a fear of the unknown but this fear was seen positively by the students — as in other cases (Shawaqfeh et al., 2020) — and with potential for the development of soft skills, in addition to the content of the disciplines. The students’ perception was aligned with the objectives of PBL, an important fact at the beginning of implementation (Ross et al., 2007).

In the same initial questionnaire about student’s perceptions, a self-evaluation of profiles with some chosen characteristics or skills was conducted. The students were encouraged to choose, among the characteristics, which ones they saw as primary, secondary, and tertiary in themselves. The profile of the classes is presented in Figure 2.

Source: Elaborated by the authors.

Figure 2 Student profile according to self-assigned primary (a), secondary (b), and tertiary (c) characteristics. 

Even though working with a generation that was born with the internet and saw smartphones emerge in their childhood, computer knowledge is the skill with the least responses, and even in the era of social networks, photo and video editing is also a characteristic with few responses. The classes are formed by students who consider themselves organized and with a good distribution among writing, research and reading, hands-on work, and creativity, among other selected characteristics. This good distribution facilitated the formation of groups, and there was no need to change the groups formed by the students themselves. The general distributions presented in Figure 2 reflect the individual patterns of each class, which showed similar distributions. An interesting point was that the choice of the leader showed no relation to characteristics such as organization — leaders from various profiles were chosen.

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION AT THE END OF THE INTERMEDIATE BIMESTERS

At the end of each bimester, a new form was assigned to the students, with open questions about their perception of remote teaching and PBL and a space for suggestions and complaints for the continuation of the work. Charts 4 and 5 present the students’ responses and some relevant topics about each theme. The responses from these forms showed adaptation difficulties that persisted throughout the year. On the other hand, they did not show difficulties with the platforms used and highlighted a self-assessment of their own characteristics, such as organization. At the end of the second bimester, the characteristics of this development become clearer, including answers about improved autonomy and independence, teamwork, and other positive points amid a few more complaints — in much smaller numbers.

Regarding PBL, at the end of the first project, students reported difficulties, such as online groupwork and the method’s difficulty itself, but amid many positive points, such as it being fun, the contact with the work world, the freedom for more in-depth research, and the curiosity to work with the method in a face-to-face course. At the end of the second project, even with comments about the difficulty, students showed maturity in organization, teamwork, and more in-depth research for a longer period as positive factors of using the method. In the open space for suggestions and criticisms, the few comments made were generally about problems with large groups. Some complaints of this type resulted in the splitting of one of the groups into smaller ones, one student who left one group and joined another, students who stopped participating in the activities by submitting or not submitting recovery assignments instead, and the need to reorganize some groups at the beginning of the next project for it to work better. The need for individual evaluation in student motivation was clear in the groups that had this type of problem and, therefore, should always be taken into consideration (Tadjer, Lafifi, and Seridi-Bouchelaghem, 2019). The students who left the groups were always students who had been presenting problems with not submitting assignments in other disciplines, showing no relation between the dropout and the methodology specifically in any case.

When thinking about deep learning, some of its main aspects (Muniz Junior et al., 2017) can be noticed in students’ comments, such as an appropriate motivational context, adequate learning activities, and interaction between student and teacher — considering the limitations of the application context. The well-structured knowledge base is the missing item, but it can be noted in the comments. Overloaded students tend to fall into superficial learning, its opposite, which produces a student focused on reproducing knowledge (ibidem), a characteristic not perceptible in students’ perception.

PERCEPTION OF STUDENTS AT THE COURSES’ CONCLUSION

Chart 6 presents students’ responses to a closed questionnaire at the end of their courses.

The results of Chart 6 show some of the aspects that were raised in the open-ended questions applied during the courses, along with the perception of students regarding typical aspects of active learning methodologies. Most students believe that the methodology should be complemented by theoretical classes (Q1) and are curious to experience the methodology in in-person classes (Q18), even though some of the classes had difficulty with projects (Q2). In this scenario, detailed feedback proved important in overcoming these difficulties (Q10 and Q11). Activities related to planning, research, feedback interpretation, discussion, and presentation (Q4) were seen as important in developing soft skills, partially creating confidence in applying these contents in a future life (Q3). One of the biggest problems is the lack of time generated by remote teaching and the pandemic itself (Q13), along with problems related to distance (Q14); the platform used was not seen as a problem (Q15). Planning was viewed positively (Q6), as was the experience of explaining content to a colleague at some point (Q12). Students generally agree that projects, even if carried out online, encompassing no more than one discipline and with the delivery of a video artifact, provide a view of work in a company (Q7), make learning more meaningful through groupwork, cooperation (Q8), and application of theoretical content (Q5) and believe they have retained the studied and applied concepts (Q9); the method is seen as a good solution for forced remote teaching (Q17). The comparison with traditional online methods (Q16) brought some confusion that diverges from the responses in the rest of the questionnaires. This type of confusion can be perceived when students have difficulties organizing their time with everyday activities (Seery, 2015), a difficulty that could be overcome in face-to-face teaching using PBL.

Chart 7 presents students’ opinions regarding remote teaching after having gone through it in an almost entire school year experience. Chart 8 presents the expectation versus reality of PBL. In comparison with the initial view, which was quite negative, some positive points, such as the development of better organization and responsibility skills, were raised by the students. On the other hand, feelings of anxiety, insecurity, and lack of commitment to studies were also raised, which may be related to higher dropout rates than usual in this atypical year — out of the 95 students who started in the three disciplines, nine completely dropped out of classes. Flexibility, initially seen as an advantage of remote teaching, ended up being raised as a difficulty in the end.

The responses presented in Chart 7 can be compared with those ones presented in Chart 6, in an attempt to separate two basic issues: PBL and remote learning. Although the topics were presented to the students at the same time, one can see a perception of remote learning generates greater difficulty in learning, especially with regard to organization and commitment to routine, along with the sudden lack of social interaction at school — with students and teachers —, generating anxiety and insecurity. As a result, various responses appear in the direction of a more uncommitted view of teaching and the school itself. On the other hand, the overall view of the responses from Chart 6, about PBL presented earlier, shows the development of planning and organization skills, interaction within workgroups and with the tutor (in this case, the teacher) that can collaborate to alleviate the problems generated by forced remote learning.

Chart 9 presents a summary of the difficulties, challenges, and limitations encountered by students in PBL. The greatest difficulties encountered by students are related to working in remote groups. The commitment of all group members, organization, and debate of ideas are seen as major challenges. On the other hand, students cited learning in a group, helping each other, discussing, and planning as difficulties that were positively overcome. The responses about students’ challenges were also largely focused on those of remote learning and require a broader interpretation, as they demonstrate failures in the organization of the study environment, student-student and student-teacher interaction, aspects of the student’s integral formation that go beyond acquired knowledge, the human formation through solidarity, values, and attitudes that come from social interaction. The challenge of having a project to complete was seen as a source of better commitment from group members, even with all the difficulties. The students mentioned that detailed feedback at various stages of the project helped them maintain their commitment when things were not going so well, which shows the importance of close contact between the teacher and the groups (Strohfeldt and Khutoryanskaya, 2015). As for limitations, the greatest time commitment, computer or internet connection problems, and communication were points raised by students, in the vast majority of responses referring to remote learning as a whole and not specifically to PBL. However, the most common response was “there are no limitations.”

Chart 10 presents the student’s opinion on planning, which was frequently mentioned by them throughout the course, and the lessons learned from using the PBL methodology. In one of the classes, the planning of the final project was not mandatory, unlike all other projects. In this class, the students themselves found it difficult to plan, organize project tasks, and divide them among group members. This fact highlighted the need to encourage them quite strongly to carry out detailed planning of tasks and member assignments, as designing the environment for solving their own problems with their own resources is an important feature of PBL (Loyens, Magda and Rikers, 2008). Planning helped students perceive their skills, and help each other when someone was struggling, which was noticed more easily due to clearly defined assignments; actively providing explanations during a discussion positively affects long-term memory (Bender, 2014). In some cases, planning resulted in subgroup divisions, which worked well for those who chose to divide and is a possibility to be encouraged in large groupwork (Dolmans, 2019). Planning makes it possible to identify the student who is not fulfilling their task, a fact evident in complaints during projects and in various student responses. The lessons learned by students parallel the difficulties raised by them, which is very positive in the evaluation of the method, as it shows obstacles that have been overcome. The main lessons were related to groupwork, research skills, independence, a broader perspective on school content, and the practical application of theoretical content.

Finally, Chart 11 presents an overview of the student’s perspective. The students encountered some difficulty at the beginning of the work due to adaptation, mainly because there was a transition to an unknown methodology in a non-face-to-face format, which was also unfamiliar to them. However, the transition was seen as challenging, a teaching method that brought learning in the discussion of ideas, in groupwork, in defining their own skills, planning, interpreting, discussing ideas, and working with shared responsibilities.

Phrases such as “I find it more interesting than the traditional approach for the Industrial Processes subject” were found in several of the questionnaires throughout the student perception evaluation, which shows the success of a challenging application of PBL in technical education at the high school level, something not found in the literature until then. High school technical education, especially in integrated courses, has one of its biggest challenges in the students’ workload (Barbosa and Moura, 2013). Nevertheless, the contents of the disciplines used in this study were fully covered, even if to a greater or lesser degree of depth. According to the students’ perception, PBL took up a lot of their time, which is a possible limitation of the method, especially when considering the preparation time of the teachers (Seery, 2015). When thinking of closer monitoring and detailed and numerous feedback, this time tends to increase, but the possibility of successful learning also increases (Strohfeldt and Khutoryanskaya, 2015), forming students with a passion for seeking knowledge, knowing where and how to seek it when necessary, and, most importantly, having their methodology for learning it. Students who have gone through a deep learning experience possess these characteristics, becoming professionals ready to face new problems and lead innovative projects in their future professional journeys.