Engaging students for active learning: structuring a project subject for first year engineering students

This paper reports on how an engineering project subject was structured in line with engagement theory to provide more active learning for students to achieve the stated objectives. The design and development steps of five real world oriented projects were structured into three major phases. Students were engaged in the roles of a manager, constructor, and tester/documenter in a team in rotation that resemble the real industrial world. Relevant pedagogical theories supporting this approach were discussed. Based on an evaluative survey, this paper also presents students’ feedback on the effectiveness of learning this project-based subject.