Upscaling A Challenge-Based And Modular Education Concept (CMODE-UP)

In 2019, a course at a Dutch University of Technology was redesigned towards challenge-based and modular education. The course was received positively by students and their learning outcomes (grades and engagement) increased compared to previous years. This redesign was quite intensive, and case-specific. It did not deliver a specific set of design principles that can easily be used to redesign other courses within the university or even other universities. Therefore, a follow-up project was started, that aims to deliver a framework to scale-up the course redesign tested in the previous study (CMODE; Challenge-based Modular On-demand Digital Education). This framework will be designed using practical principles and will be evidence-informed. The project consists of three stages: (1) informal interviews with key actors at our university, experienced in studying and/or designing modular instruction, a systematic literature review on challenge-based education and modular instruction; (2) a test of the design principles that were developed using the interviews and literature review; and (3) a test of the CMODE-up framework that was built on the results from the second stage, using think-out-loud protocols. In the current study we specifically focus on the first stage. A first look at the already existing literature around challenge-based education and modular instruction shows us that both concepts have been around for a long time in higher engineering education. Since education has become more and more digitized (and the development of MOOCs), it appears that the concepts have taken a quick increase in relevance. However, both concepts have only been studied minimally in relation to each other. We deem it thus highly relevant to first build a clear and proper view on both concepts, the strengths and weaknesses, and where both (can) meet. So that anyone who has intentions like ours - to implement both in higher education - can do this in an evidence-informed manner.