PBL Implementation in Material Science and Engineering Education at Chinese Universities

Traditional university education with ordinary lectures is changing to more practical and actively student-centered learning systems. Materials science and engineering is originally the study of actual engineering materials but now becomes more interdisciplinary and sophisticated in the rapidly advancing industrial society. It is very necessary to cultivate the practical materials engineers and it also becomes a big challenge for Chinese universities to make a change. PBL is one of the potential approaches for Chinese universities. This chapter describes PBL theories, discusses PBL principles, PBL models, and also some PBL experiences at Aalborg University. In addition, this chapter exposes how PBL could be applied to materials science and engineering education in Chinese universities, and a case of PBL implementation has been given to show the process of transformation from traditional education at Chinese universities to PBL in the materials science and engineering field.