WIP: Implementing Project Based Learning: Some Challenges from a Requirements Engineering Perspective

Project based learning (PBL) is gaining increasing traction among educational development, scholars and practitioners. The dominant argument suggests that by engaging in real world projects and research, students can acquire valuable critical thinking, team work, problem-solving, and improved communication skills. The aim of this work-in-progress paper is to investigate the effects of PBL on student performance in a requirements engineering (RE) course. Students were divided into 5 project groups; each group carried out a RE project that addresses a real-world problem. The project deliverable for each group is a complete software requirements specification (SRS) document; a user interface design; and software development project management plan. Following the completion of the project, structured feedback was elicited from the students via questionnaires. The results were combined with the final student grades to evaluate the effect of PBL on their combined performance. Preliminary results show that PBL can benefit RE courses, especially by enhancing students performance. Yet, certain challenges, e.g., stakeholders engagement and team cohesion, must be addressed before these benefits can be fully realized.