Melhorar o empenho dos alunos através do uso da aprendizagem baseada em projetos: um estudo de caso em Engenharia de Software

Abstract

In the area Information and Communication Technologies, in addition to the problem of engagement, students often have difficulties in learning subjects related to modeling and programming. The reasons for these difficulties are well known and described in the literature, pointing to difficulties in abstraction and logic. Knowing the value of flexible and personalised learning, teachers are changing the way they teach, using different active learning methodologies, such as: flipped classroom, project-based learning and peer instruction. This paper describes an experiment conducted to improve the learning experiences of the students enrolled in a Computer Science bachelor’s degree course, attending three curricular units: Information Systems Development, Data Structures and Web Languages and Technologies. The approach followed by the teachers, used project-based learning as an active learning methodology. This methodology was used to achieve four main objectives: (i) improve student’s engagement; (ii) improve learning outcomes achievement (iii) increase the course success rate and (iv) allow students to experience the need for the software development lifecycle, feeling that software engineering is not a block-based process but dependent on previous activity, often leading to the need to go back in the process. The results obtained with the use of the active methodology were well accepted by the students and allowed to reach the proposed objectives.