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Project‐based learning has been used in a number of disciplines to provide undergraduate students with the opportunity to simulate professional activities and apply theory to practice. It has been identified as an effective way to develop a range of transferable skills required by employers. This article aims to report a novel application of project‐based learning, which provided students with an opportunity to work on an international collaboration, facilitated by videoconferencing and Web 2.0.

Drawing on a number of data sources, this article examines the contribution that project‐based learning made to the development of key skills which employers within the media industry expect graduates to possess.

Conclusions suggest how project‐based learning can be used more widely to develop a range of employability skills. The international context and the use of new technologies were also seen by students to be important aspects of the project. Students offered some original insights into how these may enhance project‐based learning.

This study deals with a novel application of project‐based learning, which gave students an opportunity to work on an international collaboration, facilitated by videoconferencing and Web 2.0. Students offered some original insights into how the international context and the use of new technologies may enhance project‐based learning.

For professional sustainability work, graduates need to be able to work in teams and collaborate with stakeholders; in other words, they need to have developed interpersonal competence. There is growing evidence that project-based sustainability courses facilitate interpersonal competence development. However, research so far has focused on single case studies and on assessing learning outcomes. The purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of how graduate students learn interpersonal competence in project-based sustainability courses.

This study adopts a multi-case study approach triangulating observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups supported by Photovoice method. A comparison of three project-based sustainability courses in graduate programs at universities in the USA, Germany, Switzerland and Spain is conducted to gain generalizable insights on how interpersonal competence can be developed through project-based sustainability courses.

Receiving inputs, experiencing, reflecting and experimenting are four learning processes supportive of interpersonal competence development. Interpersonal attitudes seem to be mostly learned through a combination of experiencing and reflecting, followed by experimenting; not surprisingly, interpersonal knowledge is mostly developed through a combination of receiving inputs, experiencing and (collective) reflection; and interpersonal skills seem to be mostly learned through a combination of receiving inputs and experimenting, or, more directly, experiencing and experimenting.

These findings support the unique learning opportunities offered through project-based sustainability courses and can help instructors to better facilitate students’ development of interpersonal competence.

The value of this study is three-fold: (i) it provides a comprehensive picture of interpersonal competence, including attitudes, knowledge, and skills; (ii) it spells out specific teaching and learning processes; and (iii) it links these to specific interpersonal competence facets and components.

The article aims to describe the problem- and project-based learning (PPBL) program and the institutional context at Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability (SOS), with the goal of offering experience-based guidance for similar initiatives in sustainability programs around the world.

This case study presents the diverse PPBL activities that SOS offers on the undergraduate and the graduate levels and examines the institutional structures in place that support these activities. Data were collected through literature and document reviews, observations, interviews, student evaluations and faculty surveys.

The review of the PPBL program at SOS illustrates a case of successfully inaugurating a PPBL program in sustainability at a major university in the USA. Yet, a key challenge for this program and similar programs around the world is how to maintain the institutional momentum and make advances after the initial takeoff. SOS is attempting to address this issue by developing greater program cohesion and coordination, synthesizing past products and learning, monitoring and evaluating impacts, and developing PPBL training programs for faculty and graduate students.

The experiences and findings presented can help other programs to articulate the benefits of a PPBL initiative, anticipate implementation challenges and successfully support their own PPBL initiatives through adequate institutional structures. The review points to the fact that the major impact on both student learning and outcomes for partner organizations is achieved through a concerted effort by the organization as a whole. Successful PPBL programs require both top-down commitments from the administration and bottom-up drive from interested faculty and students.

This case study discusses the PPBL program at SOS. The findings can inform and support the ongoing transformation in sustainability education with the ultimate objective to build students’ capacities to address and solve wicked sustainability problems in the real world, competently collaborating with partners from government, business and civil society.

Critical thinking is a challenging term to describe but considered necessary for academic achievement, success in the global job market, and essential in developing a life-long learner (Dwyer, Hogan, & Stewart, 2012). Many definitions exist, but some of the components include the ability to analyse, reflect, judge, and strategise in a systematic way, to be able to solve problems (Dwyer et al., 2012). Some of the definitions, taxonomies, models, and theories of critical thinking have been built by Western culture, and the United States contributes information towards this Western approach (Nicholas & Raider-Roth, 2016; Wang, 2017). These definitions, taxonomies, models, and theories make a significant contribution to the pedagogical approaches to the teaching of critical thinking in the United States. This chapter details the structures that support the definitions of critical thinking and the history of the connections between critical thinking and classroom instruction in the United States.

Critical thinking is a necessary construct for twenty-first century learning and discussed in scholarly professional literature and popular media (Dwyer, 2017). The term is a part of the twenty-first century four Cs of learning: collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking (Cunningham, 2018). The teaching of critical thinking can be challenging, and this chapter presents an overview of some helpful pedagogical approaches, including project-based learning, project-based design, e-learning, and active learning and descriptions of instructional pedagogy including the general, infusion, immersion, and mixed approaches (Abrami et al., 2008; Dwyer, 2017; Ennis, 1989; Marin & Halpern, 2011; Willingham, 2008). Quality assurance is an essential component in ensuring pedagogical approaches to critical thinking are effective. The contribution of core standards in the teaching of critical thinking in the United States will be discussed.

There is concern that traditional teaching methods (including lectures and tutorials) do not prepare graduates with the generic employability skills required by the construction industry. This has motivated architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) academics to consider the use of student-centred approaches like collaborative learning. However, the effectiveness of collaborative learning approaches has not been widely examined in AEC education. The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical results on the benefits and barriers of collaborative learning from AEC students’ perspective.

From a questionnaire survey conducted with Associate Degree students who studied in four AEC programmes at a university in Hong Kong, 621 valid responses were received. Descriptive statistics were used to test these data for any significant agreement or disagreement between respondents.

All AEC students agreed that collaborative learning benefited them in building their academic knowledge and generic skills. However, the degree of agreement about their generic skills development differed between programmes. The findings of this study highlight the effectiveness of collaborative learning as a means of developing students’ employability skills.

First, the analysis of the benefits of collaborative learning is based on students’ perceptions rather than objective measures of learning gains. Although research suggests that self-reported measures of learning are valid indicators of educational and skill gains, the possibility of individual's bias or peer influence in the responses cannot be discounted. Second, the study does not take into account the teachers’ instructional skills that may affect the effectiveness of collaborative learning. To minimize the impact of different tutors on students’ learning experiences, standardized delivery mode and course materials were adopted in the surveyed courses.

From the findings presented, collaborative learning is a viable tool which assists in improving both the technical and generic employability skills of students. To allow students to appreciate collaboration in a practical context, multi-disciplinary collaborative assignments can be integrated in AEC curricula. Through collaboration with other disciplines, students can understand the ways of working with other professionals. At the same time, AEC educators can apply collaborative learning to strengthen specific collaborative skills. To maximize the benefits of collaborative learning, teachers should arrange regular meetings and counseling sessions with students to ensure participation from each individual.

The findings contribute practical insights about collaborative learning and, in particular, the learning attitudes and perceptions of Chinese students and engineering students. Whilst the findings are different to some studies which describe Chinese students as being influenced by the Confucian Heritage culture, and preferring competitive rather than collaborative learning, more detailed studies about collaborative learning dynamics among students from different ethnic backgrounds should improve the design of collaborative learning environments for the students.

The findings provide confidence to AEC academics to incorporate collaborative learning activities in their courses. Mapping students’ generic skills development between programme of study provides indicators that highlight the use of collaborative learning for different generic skills development in different AEC programmes. The results of this study provide useful information for AEC teachers, assisting them to design multi-disciplinary collaborative learning curricula.

This paper aims to identify and model the key barriers to implementation of project-based learning (PjBL) in higher educational institution.

Using the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) technique, the study has developed a hierarchical-based model, depicting the mutual relationships amongst the key barriers to implementation of PjBL. Additionally, the paper has performed Matrice d’ Impacts Croises Multiplication Appliqué an Classement (MICMAC) analysis to categorize the barriers in terms of their driving and dependence power.

The study has identified the key barriers to implementation of PjBL and presented an integrated model using ISM. Higher educational institutions need to pay attention to diagnose and overcome these hindrances for effective implementation of PjBL in their programmes.

The study adopts a systematic way to model the relevant barriers to implementation of PjBL. The ISM-based model would help higher education institutions to prioritize the issues as the barriers are hierarchically structured. As the input to model development is based on the experts’ opinions, it may be biased, influencing the final output of the structural model.

The presentation of PjBL implementation barriers in the form of an ISM-based model is a new effort. The model would be useful to understand the barriers and overcome these for the successful implementation of PjBL in higher educational institutions.

The objective of the paper is to identify and model the relevant enablers related to the issue of adoption and implementation of project-based learning (PjBL) in higher educational institutions.

The present study has developed an integrated model using interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and the Fuzzy Matrice d' Impacts Croises Multiplication Appliqué an Classement (FMICMAC) approach, which helps to identify and classify the important enablers and reveal the direct and indirect effects of each enabler on the PjBL implementation in higher educational institutions.

The paper has identified the key enablers and presented an integrated model using ISM and FMICMAC. The result shows that there exists a group of enablers having a high driving power and low dependence requiring maximum attention and strategic importance, while another group consists of those enablers that have high dependence and are the resultant actions.

The study proposes a scientific way to model the relevant enablers to implementation of PjBL. This would help higher educational institutions to prioritize the enablers as these are hierarchically structured. The model is based on the experts' opinions, which may be biased, influencing the final output of the structural model.

Enablers are building blocks for the adoption of PjBL. The study presents an integrated model using ISM and FMICMAC to identify and categorize various key enablers of PjBL adoption in higher education institutions. The results will help higher educational institutions to focus on the right enablers for the successful implementation of PjBL in their programs.

This study explores the preferences for learning methods among the students of seven engineering disciplines in a Spanish technical university. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the students' views and from them contribute to the knowledge of the effectiveness of learning methodologies.

An online anonymous questionnaire survey was adopted to collect students' perceptions. Seven learning methods were compared in seven engineering degrees. The authors sampled 1660 students, and 426 completed responses were analysed. In addition to a descriptive analysis of the results, a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was performed using R data processing software.

It was found that project-based learning and problem-based learning were perceived as the more effective ones. MCA identified response patterns between the preference and the efficiency of learning methods showing that students can be classified into two groups according to their preferred level of activeness in learning.

The study focusses on a single technical university and not all engineering degrees could be sampled. However, five different engineering fields were studied and no significant differences among them were found.

The results add up to the known literature showing that students have different learning needs and consequently they perceive some methods as more effective. Instructors can use this information to strengthen their learning activities. Results also suggest that students can be classified into two groups in relation to their level of activeness in learning. This can also help to enhance general student motivation if two paths with different levels of activeness are planned.

No previous studies have compared several learning methods in different engineering fields. Thus, this study contributes to fill this gap and contributes to the body of evidence around learning methodologies from the perspective of students.

Inquiry-based teaching and learning is a valued learning theory, which can transform a prescriptive, teacher-led classroom into a dynamic, active learning environment. Some factors to consider about inquiry-based activities are that they are designed to incorporate many strategies and techniques to develop students’ affective, social, and metacognition domains. Inquiry-based teaching and learning is most successful when students have some level of self-regulation and when faculty members provide meaningful guidance. Unfortunately, students are infrequently taught how to be self-regulated learners. In addition, faculty members are uncomfortable and under-incentivized to try innovative teaching pedagogies.

To illustrate the dichotomy of both the delivery of inquiry-based teaching and a student-centered approach, a DNA double helix is used as a metaphor and visual model. Importance is placed on designing learning experiences that can be adapted based on context, available technology, meaningful assessment, and positive student outcomes. Educational trends in higher education are explored and implications are drawn based on the research and programs being implemented at many universities and colleges. This chapter provides insight into how higher education institutions can scale inquiry-based teaching and learning through their strategic initiatives to promote faculty excellence. Evaluation frameworks and logic model planning strategies are included in this chapter.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a conceptual framework as a six-stage guided implementation for educators to embed Canva (an online design tool) into their marketing subjects to encourage super-skills of the 21st century including stronger collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication which in turn increases a student's work readiness.

The framework is designed from sociocultural and experiential approaches of learning and teaching. It is based on dialogic and social learning theories and guided by the 21st century skills, experience, student interactions and reflections.

Based on the initial staff and student reflections and the author's extensive teaching experience, the implementation of Canva into marketing subjects suggests students are increasing their creativity, design, collaborative and critical thinking skills due to the unique features of the tool. This is suggestive that the implementation process developed through the conceptual framework of embedding Canva supported not only the students’ learning experience but allowed for a more immersive experience for teaching staff as well.

This paper provides a pedagogical and theoretically supported rationalisation for a staged approach to embed Canva into a classroom to assist educators in fostering students’ critical thinking skills, communication, collaboration whilst encouraging higher quality and creativity of assessments. This paper may have a continued flow on effect to student's work readiness by equipping them with a needed marketing tool in their career pursuits.