What were the biggest strengths/successes of your Project Based Learning? 

The propose of the PBL was to lead students to get involved in a different community in order to create projects to transform its economy and quality of life.

Collaboration: The nature of the projects encouraged students to involve themselves totally in the collaboration of teams. Even the dynamic of making frequent oral presentations of their projects inspired students to stablish links between projects to extend and strengthen the impact in the community.

Communication: Another successes of the PBL was to observe the engagement of the students with their projects and with the community. Some of the students did the second phase of the course during their sixth semester and they confessed the gratification of finishing the implementation of their project because of the benefit it provokes in the community.

What were the biggest challenges of your PBL? 

Critical thinking: It was hard for some teams to design their project and to accept to reformulate it when it was necessary, because they couldn’t understand the final purpose of making the difference inside the community selected. I deduced it was related with the lack of knowledge and the lack of empathy of students about how the community lives and what people need to have better opportunities of working and studying.

Also, we had some difficulties inside of some teams because the projects demanded more attention of what they expected and it caused some disagreements.

What other PBL or 4Cs topics are you hoping to get support with?

I think I have the challenge this next semester of stimulating students to be more empathic with other cultures, as well as being creative and innovative putting their abilities and passions in creating something useful for other people.

I want to share with them the necessity to worry for others and to put their talents to do a better society even if they don’t get paid but as a gratification.