Problem-Based Learning as a Practical Approach to Postgraduate Materials Science Education

Abstract

AbstractThe graduate school specializes in introducing novel interdisciplinary courses. Entering students, from a diversity of backgrounds, typically have a low familiarity with current developments in materials science. Hence, interdisciplinary courses invariably erect psychological barriers, thereby reducing willingness to participate and consequently the effectiveness of learning. As a result, it is often a great challenge for students to integrate what they have previously learned with the needs of practical industrial applications. Through this study we aim to address existing questions that reside in the ideology of the “Learning Community” by using the methodology of ‘Teacher’s Action Research’. The interdisciplinary course “Material Science and Simulation” we designed is an attempt to solve problems in traditional teaching methods, such as one-way teaching and examination evaluation, which are replaced with a curriculum that introduces the current situation, describes and analyses basic materials classifications, followed by newly-produced teaching materials consisting of videos and animations offered on online audio-visual platforms, together with the latest recommended readings as references. Furthermore, the course applies the methods of problem-based learning (PBL) to reduce learning barriers, while providing an overall understanding of the latest materials science and current development status of various materials for students with various backgrounds, to facilitate advanced materials science learning. Also, students can amass and assess data through group discussions with peers, put forward their viewpoints, organize their results, and conduct complete in-depth studies. From the students' self-assessment and feedback from the questionnaire, we can see that this method has a positive effect on learning related to current materials science research.