Exploration labs: A high-quality PBL-format designed to equip students with career-critical competencies for industry

Abstract

Project-based education is an established approach in engineering education to equip students with the necessary skills to address the highly complex and uncertain challenges they face in industry in a dynamic globalized industrial environment. The belief in the efficacy of project-based learning in conveying these skills has risen among educators, and a framework for designing effective, high-quality project-based learning formats has been proposed by Mergendoller (2018).

In this paper, a project-based learning format, the Exploration Lab, is introduced to address the research question: To what extent and through which elements does the EXL enhance career-critical competencies, and how do students compare it to traditional thesis projects? The format focuses on using real industry challenges to teach early-stage agile product development and innovation in an industry setting. The main elements of the format are described and linked to how they contribute to achieving high-quality project-based learning.Adding on this, a link to the ETH Competence Framework is made, elaborating on main competencies like problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, or communication the Exploration Lab aims to convey. Observations on key-learnings of the first cohort, including student self-assessments and industry outcomes, of this format are related to the competence framework, serving as initial validation of efficacy and highlight the Exploration Lab’s alignment with high-quality project-based learning and competence-building goals. In future works, more extensive approaches to measuring the effectiveness of this format could be explored. In particular, indicators of increased competence could be assessed using tools like pre- and post-project-participation surveys.