“An Introduction to PBL Impact Canvas” Online Session Conducted for SEC Faculties

Sustainable implementation of problem based learning (PBL) pedagogy in academic courses in the partner higher education institutions (HEIs) of Nepal, India and Bhutan is the main objective of the “PBL South Asia” (PBL-SA) project. Teaching faculties are directly involved in implementing PBL pedagogy in academic courses. Therefore, they should be trained on implementing PBL pedagogy in their courses. On August 20, 2021, the PBL-SA working group of Sagarmatha Engineering College (SEC) organized a short online session to introduce PBL implementation through “PBL Canvas” to the teaching faculties.

Mr. Avinash Dhital, Project Specialist, from Aalto University, Finland coordinated as the resource person for developing and conducting the session. About thirty teaching faculties of SEC, one faculty from Nepal Engineering College (nec) and the project coordinator of Asian Institute of Technology & management (AITM) also attended the session.

The session began with opening remarks from Mr. Ramesh Shrestha, Associate Professor and Principal of SEC followed by a short presentation on the PBL-SA background and objectives of the session by Ms. Natalia Villaman of Aalto University. Then, Mr. Avinash Dhital delivered his presentation entitled “PBL Canvas Walkthrough”. The faculties were introduced with “PBL Canvas” as a tool and its application in academic courses in the field of higher education in his presentation. Ms. Julia Renko, a PBL Canvas mentor from Aalto University then shared her experiences on PBL Canvas tool, and her experiences were extremely valuable to the faculty participants. The presentation of Ms. Julia Renko was followed by question & answer session. Queries from the participants were addressed in the question & answer session. A summary of the session & the next step in PBL implementation in SEC were presented by Dr. Rabindra Raj Giri, Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, SEC, and finally the session was concluded. The entire session lasted for about one and half hour. The session was very fruitful for SEC faculties, and it gave an overview on how one can implement PBL in academic courses in higher education.