KEY ATTRIBUTES OF A PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING (PBL) ENVIRONMENT ON MATERIAL ENGINEERING

Material Engineering has traditionally been an important part of an engineer's training. The initial Engineering course in second year undergraduate engineering degree play an integral part in combining the learned knowledge and promote problem solving proficiency. Engineers outlines, soft skills and social proficiencies as a key competency in the accreditation framework. Furthermore the engineering competency standard gives design a significant weight in its evaluation criteria, requiring engineering curriculum to have significant design course experience. Thus engineering material pedagogy including assessment and evaluation strategies are of an increased emphasis for educators. This paper describes the application of problem based learning in an undergraduate preliminary engineering material course with an emphasis on student learning.