2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The design of problem-based learning (PBL) environments is difficult and there is a seeming lack of methodological tools to support faculty in design, facilitation, and assessment in PBL. In this theory/methods paper we put forth a “methodological toolkit” that is emerging from our exploratory design-based research in a PBL setting. The toolkit is represented in reflective activities that have potential to support the PBL design process, including problem development and facilitation. The primary items that make up this toolkit include concept maps and learning hierarchy analysis, intersected with ideas of knowledge types, and dimensions of problem structuredness and complexity. These methods have been deployed to support systematic and reflective interrogation of problem design and facilitation practices of faculty (i.e., problem designer and facilitator) perspective, as well as connection building between problem characteristics of complexity and structuredness and the types of knowledge required/developed to resolve those characteristics. Two examples of faculty use of the methodological toolkit are presented and used as a basis for discussion. Examples are drawn from a sophomore-level introductory aerospace engineering course, and a third-year machine design course. The potential for this emerging methodological toolkit to support faculty in development of PBL(-like) experiences and to further a PBL community of practice is described.