Best Practices of Problem-Based Learning Implementation for IT Courses from Students Perspectives

Abstract

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a powerful learning approach that leads to enhance and sustain learning towards student centered, problem focused, self-reflective learning, and self-directed learning. This may improve student ability in problem solving, critical thinking, work as a teamwork, and leadership. All these soft skills are important to IT students as a preparation for their future career development. Unfortunately, there is no statistical evidence to support the effectiveness of the PBL implementation as claim by many researchers. Therefore, the top management of Higher Education Institution (HEI) is really concerned with the effectiveness of the Problem-based Learning (PBL) implementation of certain courses in the university. The effectiveness of the PBL implementation is actually depends on the best practices of the PBL implementation of the IT courses. Thus, this study aims to identify the factors and the relationship among factors that influence the best practices of PBL implementation of IT courses from students' perspectives. The student perception of the PBL implementation of IT courses also take-in consideration as one of the effective measurement in this study. The student’s perception is important to ensure the successfulness of the PBL implementation. The study involved three (3) main phases: firstly PBL implementation factors are identified, secondly, a PBL model of IT courses is constructing, and finally, the proposed PBL model is validated using statistical analysis. Four main factors are identified: PBL Course Assessment, PBL Characteristics, PBL Practices, and Students’ Perception. Based on these four factors, a PBL model is constructed. Then, based on the proposed PBL model, six hypotheses are formulated and analyzed to validate the model. The results show that all hypotheses are significantly acceptable. The result also shows that the PBL Characteristics and PBL Course Assessment factors are significantly influenced the PBL Practices and indirectly influenced the Students’ Perception of the PBL Implementation for IT courses. This PBL model can assist instructors, decision makers in enhancing the PBL learning strategy of IT courses. It is also can be tested to other courses in various educational domains in the future.