Assessment of a project-based learning versus conventional engineering program using analytical hierarchy technique

Abstract

Education is the backbone of any nation and evolving the teaching methodology is crucial to improving the quality of delivered programs. At the heart of education is engineering, the main driver of technological advancement and economic prosperity. Conventionally engineering programs were delivered as a set of courses with a capstone project to demonstrate the student's learnings. However, project-based learning (PBL) model had been recently proposed by some engineering program to widen and increase the application of the learning resulting in a market-ready graduate. This work aims to quantitatively compare the quality of education in both; conventional engineering programs and engineering programs adopting the PBL model using an evaluated set of quality indicators. The quality indicators are divided into three different primary ones, each has a set of secondary indicators. The first primary indicator is the taught curriculum, with secondary indicators being the availability of resources, compatibility with the market, and maturity of the curriculum. The second primary quality indicator is the operations within the program, with secondary indicators being the quality of the instructors, time spent between students and instructors, and the structure of the operations. The third primary indicator is the graduate, with secondary indicators being the average pay of graduates, employment ratio, and employment within the engineering sector. Using the analytical hierarchy approach (AHP), the relative importance of each quality indicators is identified based on a survey of 10 experts with teaching experience in both types of programs, however, to eliminate bias, only 4 expert’s opinions were used to drive the data. Using data gathered from the surveys, a weighted value indicating the importance level of the indicator is calculated. It was found that the curriculum was the most important quality indicator, this is followed by the operations within the program, as they both signify direct input to the educational model. Following that, each primary and secondary indicator was assigned a value for each type of the engineering programs based on a survey form the 4 non-biased experts teaching in both types. This value indicates the conformity and fulfillment offered by the program with reference to the tackled indicator. Based on this value and the relative importance of the indicator calculated earlier an overall rank is calculated for each program. The results indicate that engineering programs adopting the PBL model showed a marginally higher overall rank of 0.8 compared to 0.76 for conventional programs.