2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper compares and evaluates the role of two group-based active learning strategies, Bloom’s Taxonomy-based learning (BTL) and project-based learning (PBL), on student knowledge, and comprehension in an undergraduate Fluid Mechanics class. Problems in engineering textbooks are typically designed to require learners to recall facts or apply concepts to solve for numerical answers. Based on Bloom’s Taxonomy framework, these textbook problems are categorized at the lower cognitive levels of Remember and Apply, which may not fully facilitate students’ deep learning. The authors designed and developed Bloom’s Taxonomy-based assignments to include problems at three additional Bloom’s Taxonomy cognitive levels of Understand, Analyze, and Evaluate. Our previous works and others have separately shown that implementing BTL and PBL in addition to textbook problems could deeply engage students in the learning content and enhance students’ critical thinking skills and knowledge comprehension. However, to the best of our knowledge, the impact of these two teaching pedagogies has not been evaluated concurrently. In this study, we conduct a comparative analysis between two groups of students (n = 200) to determine the role of BTL and PBL in a similar class setting. Both groups were taught in active learning classrooms with online polling, in-class group discussions, and in-class assignments. The BTL group was exposed to Bloom’s Taxonomy-based assignments, while the PBL group was involved in a group-term project. Our results show that both BTL and PBL students demonstrated comparable problem-solving skills and statistically similar performances on the common formative and summative assessments. However, students in the BTL section performed better on problems at higher cognitive levels. Our comparative analysis provides insights into how the type of group-based assignments impact overall student learning outcomes.