A study-case on a project course: seminars, project, feedback and reflections in the context of a student's active learning

The paper presents a case-study at Kristianstad University, with the focus on the Software Engineering project based course, given on the second academic year of the programmes within computer science.

This paper discusses the course design with regard to two main parts of the course: seminars and project, and how those were organized in order to facilitate student’s active learning.

The active learning here is focusing on several main factors: course design, course design and its relation to the programme, academic loop (i.e. academic loop is part of a couple of selected courses that develop student’s academical skills), seminars forms, individual feedback and course feedback, as well as documented reflections on project work.

More in deep, the paper presents examples on the pedagogical findings when it comes to seminars organization and how the changes made in the course helped to an increased student active learning. Such information includes: best practice on course design, best practice on seminars exercises, and project work. The results presented are empirical and are based on observations, as well as on a formal and informal feedback.

Moreover, the paper addresses also the theme of the importance of feedback in students’ active learning. Here, feedback is discussed in terms of: student-course instructor feedback, course instructor-student feedback, individual vs. group feedback, and peer-review.

Finally, the paper shows reflections on a two dimensional (2D) survey where the results from 2015 and 2016 are compared and discussed, in order to suggest further improvements for an increased student active learning.