Designing education is about making educated creative design decisions following a systematic process.
Redesigning existing courses
Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) can be incorporated into existing courses. The challenge to be worked on by student teams can act as the real-life application of the topic of the course. When including challenges into existing courses, it is important to keep the learning objectives flexible, as students will make their own choices and thus steering part of their learning themselves. As a teacher, you will not only be the content expert of the course but also act as a coach when the students will be working on their challenges.
Extra-curricular learning experiences
CBL can also be implemented extra-curricular. The Big Idea can be brought in by external organisations, or defined by the students themselves. The students then continue with the other steps of CBL, where good support in taking these steps is very beneficial. A teacher with experience in CBL can be a good coach. Learning objectives and learning strategies will be defined by the students themselves. What helps is when you think about assessment and credits before the start of the challenge.
Curriculum design
The same design principle applies to designing a Challenge-Based Learning curriculum as a more traditional curriculum. The design context and principles of Challenge-Based Learning framework and learning principles are in this case input for the design. Special attention needs to be addressed to the mindset of the educational design team.
Moving towards a CBL mindset is a challenge in itself.
For support or questions email cbl-ces@utwente.nl or get in touch with one of our CBL experts.