Integrating Disciplines with PBL at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon (UANL)

Abstract

Problem-based learning is one of the most useful resources in education with the potential to effect real world change. The evident benefits of PBL in the face of the challenges that Latin America presently encounters have led many institutions to consider the adoption of PBL curricula. However, PBL implementation has its own set of difficulties. “I liked to work in a multidisciplinary team because our skills were complemented. Sometimes, it was difficult to understand our different ways of working, because we were focused on different things”, said one of the students of our institution. This paper describes how different academic programs from the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon (UANL) in Mexico, were integrated in a Learning Unit (LU) using the Problem Based Learning (PBL) methodology. First, we present some PBL definitions to delineate its main characteristics, like the students facing real problems. Afterwards, we describe the PBL implementation process at our university, its precedents, the administrative process, and the adaptation into an existing LU. Additionally, we describe how we adapted the PBL methodology to the Sustainable Ecological Environments course while also integrating the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, dedicated to cities and sustainable communities. Finally, we mention some findings from the Sustainable Ecological Environments LU. Most notably, the students favour working in multidisciplinary teams and the amount of student investment was higher than in traditionally taught courses. Nevertheless, multidisciplinary work means a constructive challenge for teachers, because it involves a closer monitoring of the student's learning process and a different time distribution than traditional courses, with a higher time investment during planning stages.

Full text

VOL. 8, NO. 1, – Page 106-118
10.5278/ojs.jpblhe.v8i1.2645
________________
* Carlos Estuardo Aparicio, Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Email: caparicio55@yahoo.com
Karen Hinojosa, Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Email: hinojosakaren@gmail.com
Amanda Melissa Casillas Zapata, Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Email: melissa.casillas@gmail.com
Integrating Disciplines with PBL at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon (UANL)
Carlos Estuardo Aparicio, Karen Hinojosa, Amanda Melissa Casillas Zapata *
ABSTRACT
Problem-based learning is one of the most useful resources in education with the
potential to effect real world change. The evident benefits of PBL in the face of the
challenges that Latin America presently encounters have led many institutions to consider
the adoption of PBL curricula. However, PBL implementation has its own set of
difficulties. “I liked to work in a multidisciplinary team because our skills were
complemented. Sometimes, it was difficult to understand our different ways of working,
because we were focused on different things”, said one of the students of our institution.
This paper describes how different academic programs from the Autonomous University
of Nuevo Leon (UANL) in Mexico, were integrated in a Learning Unit (LU) using the
Problem Based Learning (PBL) methodology. First, we present some PBL definitions to
delineate its main characteristics, like the students facing real problems. Afterwards, we
describe the PBL implementation process at our university, its precedents, the
administrative process, and the adaptation into an existing LU. Additionally, we describe
how we adapted the PBL methodology to the Sustainable Ecological Environments
course while also integrating the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goal
(SDG) 11, dedicated to cities and sustainable communities. Finally, we mention some
findings from the Sustainable Ecological Environments LU. Most notably, the students
favour working in multidisciplinary teams and the amount of student investment was
higher than in traditionally taught courses. Nevertheless, multidisciplinary work means
a constructive challenge for teachers, because it involves a closer monitoring of the
student's learning process and a different time distribution than traditional courses, with
a higher time investment during planning stages.

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Keywords: Multidisciplinary approaches, Public Health, Industrial Design, Architecture,
Sustainability
INTRODUCTION
Problem Based Learning (PBL) is an academic method where students acquire knowledge and
develop skills for investigating and for responding to real problems (Barrows, 1986). The
problem is the departure point, and in order to tackle the problem, organized groups of students
develop academic projects. The projects are supported by courses where students obtain
theoretical and methodological tools. The participation of a supervisor is necessary;
nevertheless, the collaboration between the students groups, the supervisor, and external
partners is significant. One of the core concepts of PBL is that students have the responsibility
for their own learning (Askehave et al., 2015). Savery (2015) remarks that “PBL is an
instructional (and curricular) learner-centered approach that empowers learners to conduct
research, integrate theory and practice, and apply knowledge and skills to develop a viable
solution to a defined problem”.
This paper delineates the PBL implementation process at the Faculty of Architecture from the
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL) in a multidisciplinary LU, starting with its
precedents, until some findings from this experience. The precedents include the official contact
of the UANL Campus Team with the PBL methodology at the CITYLAB Meetings in 2016,
and the implementation of four pilot groups since the beginning of January 2017 until December
2017, as well as the results from that preliminary experience that contributed to design the final
PBL course. Also in this section, the administrative process for creating an interfaculty PBL
course is mentioned. Subsequently, the section “Adapting PBL to an existing LU” describes the
procedure where two members of our campus team designed a final PBL course that consists
in a multidisciplinary class based in an existing LU, integrating students from three
undergraduate programs of the UANL.
In this course, students from undergraduate programs on Nutrition, Architecture and Industrial
Design participated with Ph. D students, guided by five UANL teachers and two international
Citylab consultants. These teachers were specialists in subjects like Bioclimatic Architecture
and Urbanism, Public Space, and Social Sciences among others. The undergraduate students
were divided in multidisciplinary teams from the three different programs; meanwhile the two
Ph.D. students were teaching aides (TA), acting as advisors among the teams. The students
decided to work on the urban context of the UANL Health Campus. They detected problems
like lack of security, informal commerce and congested traffic, but they decided to work on the
more visible problem of pollution and garbage.

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Finally, we conclude with some findings from the final PBL course implementation, like the
necessity to integrate more interfaculty elective projects along the university. The knowledge
and skills acquired by our students while facing real problems was encouraging, and reinforces
the plan of replicating the course. In order for replicability to be successful, we include some
findings about both teacher’s and student’s expectations and challenges.
THE PBL IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS
To describe the PBL implementation progression at UANL, we mention some precedents and
the administrative process for creating an interfaculty PBL course.
The precedents
Our first formal contact with PBL methodology was during the CITYLAB Inception Meeting,
in Antwerp, Belgium in February, 2016, where the participant institutions decided to work on
the 11th of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UNDP, 2015). This particular goal
strives to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. After the
Lima CITYLAB Workshop, in October 2016, we designed and implemented two workshops
with teachers at the Faculty of Architecture from the UANL, with the intention of disseminating
PBL into other courses and potentially growing our campus team.
Later, in January 2017 the first PBL implementation started on a pilot group at the Faculty of
Architecture, inside the LU called Urban Workshop I, a 5th Semester course for architects
(Facultad de Arquitectura UANL, 2018). This course had 16 sessions and it considered the
participation of Campus Team members and stakeholders. Additionally, the PBL pilot group
received the class in English. The subject for that course was the creation of a residential
development in the municipality of General Escobedo, located at the north of the Monterrey
Metropolitan Area (MMA). The implicated stakeholders were the authorities from the Urban
Development Department of the mentioned municipality and Real Estate Developers that
owned the site.
Because of administrative reasons regarding course openings and availability each semester,
our PBL course wasn’t fixed consistently to a LU. We adapted its content and methodology
into available courses that fulfilled our criteria, namely, a course at the undergrad level, which
could be enriched by having an urban problem as a starting point. It is also worth mentioning
that Urban Workshop I and II projects are the same for the whole school, and project exhibition
fairs are held at the end of the semester where comparison between different classes' solutions
is possible.

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Subsequently, during the Summer Course 2017, we implemented another PBL module with a
second pilot group, in the LU named Urban Workshop II, a 6th Semester course for architects.
This course also received the participation of Campus Team members and stakeholders. The
subject for that course was the requalification of the Urban Core of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, a
city located at Mexico-US border. The involved stakeholders were people from the Urban
Development Office from the municipality of Matamoros.
Continuing with the process of adapting the PBL methodology, in the Fall Semester 2017, the
third and fourth pilot groups were carried out for the LU Urban Workshop I and II. For the first
of these courses the subject was the creation of a residential development nearby an ecological
area in south of the MMA. The implicated stakeholders were Real Estate Developers. For the
Urban Workshop II the subject the requalification of the UANL District. The project included
the surrounding areas to the university campus, located in two municipalities from the MMA.
The participating stakeholders were authorities from the municipalities of San Nicolas de los
Garza and Monterrey, as well as people from the UANL.
In the four cited cases, we observed an enthusiastic involvement of the students until the
midterm session, going together with a good presentation of their works. Nevertheless, the final
presentation was not extraordinary. A space for student feedback was provided after each course
implementation. In the last pilot group, feedback was through an online survey using Google
forms. Among the results of this survey, the students expressed that the workload was higher
in a PBL course than in a regular course, and that having a multidisciplinary team of teachers
left them sometimes confused and contradicted about their feedback, mentoring and opinions.
The majority of students, 78.6%, totally agreed that the PBL course encouraged collaborative
work, as we can see in figure 1. A high percentage of students, 78.5%, agreed that the PBL
course helped them better understand class concepts when compared to a traditional course, as
seen in figure 2.
Figure 1. Students answer to the question of whether the PBL course encouraged teamwork.1 is Totally disagree
and 5 is Totally agree.

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Figure 2. Students answer to the question of whether the PBL course helped to better understand class concepts
when compared to a traditional course.1 is Totally disagree and 5 is Totally agree.
Based on the experience of the four pilot groups and the feedback of teachers and students that
participated, the campus team members redesigned the PBL module.
Also, the exchange of experiences that took place with the other universities in the CityLab
meeting that took place in September 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to the
restructuring of the course. The integration of multidisciplinarity was done in varying degrees
by all the participating members, according to their needs and possibilities. After hearing about
the initial experiences of teams that took a greater multidisciplinary approach, the challenges
of greater variety of disciplines in students, teachers and problem approach, seamed
surmountable, and the benefits tangible. Consequently, the decision was reached that both
student and teacher teams had to be multidisciplinary. We understood that the module in its
prior form lacked flexibility to implement it adequately and we decided to create a new PBL
course, considering multidisciplinary, multi-knowledge, and multilevel students issues and
integrating an interfaculty team of teachers. We conducted some research on successful
integration of disciplines in educational curricula, and concluded that in order to successfully
manage multidisciplinarity in our course, all disciplines involved needed to be task oriented and
focused on what their strengths where towards problem-solving (Salmon Cox et. al, 1977). At
the same time, 15 teachers from the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Public Health
and Nutrition were in the process of completing the PBL Online training on the University of
Antwerp platform, strengthening our original team. The experience of creating the new PBL
course, its implementation and their final results after these changes were implemented are
explained in the next section.

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The administrative process for creating an interfaculty PBL course
The UANL (2011) Academic model considers the elective LU inside the curricula of each
academic program. Their objective is promoting student’s mobility and knowledge from
outside their disciplinary courses. These courses can be taken in other educational programs of
the UANL, or in other domestic or foreign institutions with which the UANL has established
academic agreements.
In our case, the teachers Amanda Melissa Casillas Zapata and Karen Hinojosa Hinojosa
designed a course based in an existing free election LU called Sustainable Ecological
Environments, incorporating the 11th SDG principles and the UANL Campus Team members’
knowledge. While contemplating the particulars of SD goal 11: inclusivity, safety,
sustainability and resilience, and the problems of the Metropolitan Area of Monterrey, the
concept of healthy cities emerged. A healthy city “is one that is continually creating and
improving those physical and social environments and expanding those community resources
which enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and
developing to their maximum potential” (WHO, 1998). Monterrey poses several threats to
health as a city because of its pollution problem (Fernandez Delgadillo, 2016). Thus we
resolved to integrate into our multidisciplinary course the Faculty of Public Health and
Nutrition from the UANL.
After an organizational procedure, the LU called Sustainable Ecological Environments was
offered to undergraduate students from the Nutrition program, and from the two undergraduate
programs of the Faculty of Architecture: Architecture and Industrial Design. The mentioned
LU has four selected students from the Nutrition program, five from Industrial Design who
decided to take the course, and three students from Architecture who only have this option for
their inscription. In order to have a multilevel course, we invited two Ph.D. in Architecture and
Urban Studies students, although administratively they are taking the course as extra credit, not
as part of their programs.
ADAPTING PBL TO AN EXISTING LU
The design of the final PBL module “Sustainable Ecological Environments” LU is made by
the principles of Competency-based education (UANL, 2018); this course tackles urban
problems with a multidisciplinary systemic approach. The course integrates the objectives of
SD goal 11: inclusivity, safety, sustainability and resilience, around the problems of the
Metropolitan Area of Monterrey and the big idea of healthy cities. The course encourages the
ability to work in inter, multi and transdisciplinary teams. The course was given by five
teachers, specialists in subjects like Bioclimatic Architecture, Urbanism, Public Space, and
Social Sciences among others. Each teacher had at least four in person classes with the students.

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During the 8th week of the semester, we received the CITYLAB Experts Visit. Heilyn Camacho
Nuñez, from Aalborg University (Denmark), and Sandra Ornés Vásquez, from Simon Bolívar
University (Venezuela) made two workshops with the students, and some workshops and
conferences with teachers and students from the previously mentioned UANL faculties. Also,
among the activities carried out during their visit, they worked in a world café with the group,
where they shared their PBL experience in the midterm of the semester.
The 12 undergraduate students were divided in four teams integrated by scholars from different
programs; meanwhile, the two Ph.D. students acted as Teaching Aides and supported the
research of all teams. The students focused on the surrounding area of the UANL Health
Campus. A part of the group was already familiarized with the area and had real life experiences
with the problems they were identifying. That aspect was a trigger that motivated their research
and site analysis. We confirmed that initial interest in learning can be triggered by personal
relevance (Hidi & Renninger, 2006), when we observed great involvement particularly from
students coming from the Nutrition program, probably because their faculty is located at that
Campus.
The students used different research tools to investigate the site problems, such as surveys,
mappings, photographic records, videos, among others. They detected a diversity of problems
like insecurity, traffic or informal commerce, but showed more interest in working on the
problem of pollution, particularly solid waste in the area. The students decided to analyze the
pollution problem not only from a local perspective but regional, that made them conscious of
the problem dimension.
The problem definition was one of the main challenges for students within the PBL course.
Pollution and garbage have a significant impact on other site problems that they were
recognizing during each session, this issue was studied from the perception of the
environmental education that has an interdisciplinary approach to promote a change of
conscience towards the environment. In this sense, the ability to identify the problem and
establish parameters in the approach of the solution allowed them to develop a critical skill, a
fundamental aspect that according with Savery (2015) students could developed when they
worked with this learning methodology.
In addition, the problem formulation and analysis phase took longer than expected during the
course, because of that the students realized the importance of working on their time
management skills. However, spending more time on the analysis due to the lack of knowledge
about the problem allowed them to develop their research capacity and encouraged them to
apply what they have learned on the evaluation of their hypotheses and possible solutions, these
reflects what several authors has point out about self-direct learning like Hmelo-Silver (2004).

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At the beginning of the PBL course the students were confused and struggled with the transition
of working with more than one teacher, after few classes they adapted and embraced the
experience of facing the teacher as a facilitator that would guide them rather than just teach
them. On the other hand, for the teachers, the challenge was in the adaptation of a program that
implicated a lot of internal coordination and organization for the five teachers that were
participating on the process.
The evaluation is used to determine the effectiveness of the projects that were designed to
improve the teaching and learning process (Savin-Baden & Major, 2004). One of the difficulties
we encountered while evaluating the problem-based learning process was that the UANL uses
traditional models of evaluation that are both quantitative and summative. Based on that, it was
necessary to adapt an integral evaluation to a numeric value, requiring the involvement of the
professors and experts during the evaluation process. In the same way, the students contributed
to the evaluation, with feedbacks through an online poll, about the course and their PBL
experience.
At the end of the semester, the students made a public presentation at the main hallway of the
School of Architecture. They designed two posters and edited a video that described the
development process of their project.
SOME FINDINGS FROM THE SUSTAINABLE ECOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENTS LU
The CITYLAB Experts visit lends us to see that students are favorable to work in
multidisciplinary teams. Nevertheless, the experts perceive that it is necessary to integrate more
interfaculty elective projects along the university. Multidisciplinarity means a constructive
challenge for teachers, because it involves a closer monitoring of the student's learning process.
Our team found that time investment distributions are different than in a traditional course, and
that going into the experience with that expectation eases the transition into this way of
teaching.
The experts remarked that our LU shows a process which includes theoretical aspects, the
approach with communities and exchanges between both faculties. We consider, as a next step,
to deepen the collaborative work and the solutions from the perspective of the SDGs.
Retaking the PBL principles, our students are acquiring knowledge and they are developing
skills to problem-solve, researching and responding to real problems. Our student teams found
the experience invigorating and exciting, but not without challenges. The feedback they
received from five teachers and two experts sometimes was contradictory, and assuming and
accepting that some contradictions were part of the multidisciplinary working model was one
of the unexpected learning outcomes for both teachers and students.

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IMPLEMENTING THE PROJECT AFTER THE COURSE
The final part of the LU, was announcing the winner team for participating at the Bogota
students’ competition. Three students from the Nutrition program, one from Architecture and
other from Industrial Design were chosen. They decided to integrate the main ideas of the
course and put them in practice to at least partially solve or mitigate the solid waste pollution
problem they had defined. During June and July the students actively developed their project.
For example, between the 11th and the 15th June they made a "schedule of actions", a self-
criticism of the winning project, and a redefinition of the project integrating other SDGs.
The following week, students reinforced their theoretical framework and they made a list of
stakeholders. They contacted UANL’s UNIVERDE Federation and they learned about some
sustainable existing actions at the institution. It is important to mention that the UANL is
recognized as the most sustainable university in Mexico by the Federal Government and some
international rankings like the UI GreenMetric World University Ranking on Sustainability
(UANL, 2018). During the last week of June and the first of July, the students decided to
produce an activation with Health Campus students that integrated the recycling process, waste
management, ecological awareness, and recreational activities to make the experience
memorable. They used gamification strategy, consisting in applying the concepts and
mechanics of games, but “in an atmosphere of non-gaming" (BBC, 2013). The students decided
to launch their project during the “Welcome activities for new students” at the Faculty of Public
Health and Nutrition.
Since the majority of solid waste found at the site came from recyclable materials from food
and drink containers, students collected aluminum cans and plastic bottles. They created with
them two “intuitive pots” (Figure 3).

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Figure 3. Intuitive pots designed by the students.
Between the 9th and the 13th July the group prepared its participation at the previously
mentioned event. The students built a brand and they called the team “Garra Ecológica”
(Ecological Claw), inspired by the university’s sport teams nickname and mascot, Tigers. Also,
the team made a sustainable Kit for the participants that includes Tupperware, eco-bags,
reusable silverware and Thermos. On Friday 13th the recreational activities and the
sustainability campaign started at the Faculty of Public Health and Nutrition.
This participation is only an example of the activities related to the project that the team
continues to develop. At the moment of finishing this paper, our students have been invited to
be part of some sustainable projects inside the UANL, like their participation in an internal
forum at the Faculty of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (Figure 4).

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Figure 4. Publicity for an internal students forum in Sustainability at the UANL.
PBL courses don’t have the responsibility or the objective of solving real world problems.
Problems are greatly motivating excuses, fertile ground for knowledge and skills to grow from
confronting them. However, when contextual learning is relevant to the students of PBL
courses, there is great potential for projects to take a life of their own and transcend the limits
of their intended goals.

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