Project-based learning in biomedical sciences: using the collaborative creation of revision resources to consolidate knowledge, promote cohort identity and develop transferable skills

ABSTRACT

Project-based learning (PBL) has been found to deepen learning and develop employability skills for students through active engagement with the learning materials. Foundation, first and second year Biomedical Science students at the University of Sussex were introduced to a PBL exercise. Each class had an approximate student to staff ratio of eighty to two. Students were put into groups of four to five and asked to create a revision guide for a disease system, which was then shared among the cohort for exam preparation. Students were later surveyed on the effectiveness of this group activity. 74% indicated the activity helped them integrate knowledge from previous modules, with the majority of the students scoring the activity 4 out of 5 for consolidation of knowledge. 75% of the participants who took part before the pandemic indicated that the tasks enabled them to build a cohort identity, with 59% students feeling similarly during the pandemic. Additionally, we qualitatively assessed the development of transferrable skills, such as teamwork, effective communication and time management. The results of the questionnaire suggested that students were able to gain these skills. This paper outlines the study, discusses benefits and limitations, and provides potential solutions for the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Problem-based learning
• sense of community
• COVID19
• knowledge consolidation
• transferrable skills

Introduction

How students learn is a well-versed educational debate (Sfard 2016). The idea that knowledge is effectively transmitted from teacher to student through lectures is widely contested (Chickering and Gamson 1987); many educationalists argue that only by doing something with the teaching material do students move from a position of not knowing to a position of knowing (Louis et al. 2019). Research indicates that students need to interact with the knowledge and have practice using it for themselves in authentic or semi-authentic tasks (Chickering and Gamson 1987; Hanson and Wolfskill 2000; McLuckie and Topping 2004; Topping 2005; Wurdinger et al. 2007; Eberlein et al. 2008). An active learning methodology, such as project-based learning (PBL), encourages students to ‘abandon their passive attitude toward learning’ and construct a concrete artefact, forcing them to put what they know into practice (Alves et al. 2018). Curriculum design that uses PBL contrasts with the traditional HE curriculum, which assesses student learning through midterm and end-of-term essays and exams.

The benefits of project-based learning

The act of collaboratively constructing an output helps actively engage students with the taught material and boosts their motivation to learn (Rodríguez et al. 2015; Louis et al. 2019; Slough and Milam 2013). This motivation-boost became increasingly important with the move to teaching online during the COVID-19 pandemic, where students were engaging with taught content and their peers through a computer screen (Rossi et al. 2021). For successful online learning, which offsets student isolation from both the academic subject and their cohort, educators must facilitate interactions between both learner–content and learner–learner (Chien‐Yuan and Guo 2021). PBL fosters these two areas of interaction through peer collaboration, the necessity to work through a series of problems, and working towards a required output that is either formally or informally assessed.

The collaborative creation of an output requires students to consider different stages of production and follow these stages step-by-step. This process means ‘that gaps in knowledge cannot be easily overlooked or overcome’ (Helle, Tynjälä, and Olkinuora 2006). As students think their way through the steps of enquiry, they actively engage with material and thereby consolidate understanding (Maton 2009; Sanchez-Muñoz et al. 2020). In addition, when PBL happens in a group, discussions and potential disagreements in the appropriate stages of production occur, prompting students to negotiate and coordinate to reach an agreement. This consensus is tested and verified by the group through the various stages of production, thereby achieving ‘more diverse and in-depth social knowledge construction’ (Sheng-Yi et al. 2013, 78). Through active participation in project groups, PBL students feel more confident in their subject knowledge than non-PBL students (Rodríguez et al. 2015). The PBL production process gives students the opportunity to see their learning physically develop. Both stumbling blocks and developments in understanding are materialised, helping to demystify the learning process.

Group PBL creates connections between students by giving them a common goal and a reason to work together. Robinson et al. (2007) found that group PBL encourages an environment of ‘student engagement and community building’ (Robinson et al. 2007). The need for community building was particularly felt during periods of online learning (Khan et al. 2017). For example, while studying online during the COVID-19 pandemic, HE students generally reported feelings of depression and there appeared to be a decline in student mental health (Stamatis et al. 2021). While a multitude of factors contributed to this decline, making it impossible to address through a singular approach, collaborative working during PBL has been reported to boost student well-being (Johnson and Johnson 1999; Stamatis et al. 2021) and therefore can be implemented to help improve psychological outlooks amongst cohorts.

Alongside building both confidence with course content and a sense of community, PBL also develops interdisciplinary thinking by allowing students to apply their learning to real-world environments, often outside of education (Vogler et al. 2017). These real-world skills are labelled ‘transferable’ and are valuable because of the long-term learning benefits that they give to students beyond their university life. PBL develops a range of transferable skills, such as team working, effective communication, problem solving, time management and critical thinking. In PBL, students generally work together in a non-hierarchical sense as peers, to achieve their common goal. PBL often has a flat leadership model, whereby ‘leaders are situational and collaboration is dynamic and non-coercive’ (Cain and Cocco 2013). Teamwork in PBL gives students the experience of solving problems together, through effectively communicating challenges and solutions, and reaching consensus within the group. Effective communication is vital for deep learning and Topping (2005, p. 637) says that a ‘participant might never have truly grasped a concept until having to explain it to another, embodying and crystallising thought into language’ (Topping 2005) The building of effective communication skills, particularly when required to express independent viewpoints, is important for students in all disciplines, but particularly important for scientific disciplines, which at their heart require ‘the inclusion of all ideas – including ideas that are ultimately rejected, justification for ideas/designs/rejections, and attribution to experts or evidence’ (Slough and Milam 2013). As students work together towards their common aim, they must maintain time management skills by continually reflecting upon the project’s purpose, setting clear and realistic goals and making decisions regarding the pace, process and trajectory of learning (Kokotsaki, Menzies, and Wiggins 2016). Continual reflection on progress is key to the critical component of PBL, which requires students to innovate as they attempt to overcome obstacles and thereby engage with the material at a more complex level (Wurdinger and Qureshi 2014). The group aspect of PBL gives students the opportunity to critique their own work and the work of their peers. The fact that the outcome of these PBL projects are revision resources that benefit the entire cohort will hopefully make students constructive critics, rather than resorting to fault-finding.

Despite the many benefits of PBL, it can be difficult to assess: ‘given that PBL is necessarily more or less an adventure, […] assessment is especially difficult’ (Helle, Tynjälä, and Olkinuora 2006). Learning from PBL activities is demonstrated as much in the process of creation as it is in the final result. To overcome difficulties around assessing PBL, this current study utilises PBL’s focus on process by using it in the student’s preparation for assessment, rather than the assessment itself. Students worked in designated groups to collaboratively create revision resources on disease settings. The construction of these resources dealt with the dearth of revision material for students within this subject area. To promote motivation, students were reminded that these resources could be used throughout their degree programme and thereby positively affect their final grade. This research paper evaluates the impact of the collaborative creation of revision resources on student learning by asking whether such a project helped students consolidate knowledge, build a sense of community, and develop transferable skills.

Methods

This is in part an action research project (Somekh 1995) as one of the authors is the module convenor and designed the PBL teaching activity, in part a quantitative study and in part a qualitative study. The questionnaire to students was designed by the tutor and an educationalist. The teaching method employed a PBL approach, whereby students were divided into designated groups by randomisation and tasked with creating revision resources focused on a disease setting. The project’s main objective was to encourage students to utilise their study time collaboratively and consolidate their knowledge, as they brought together learning materials from various modules, which they shared with their group through peer-tutoring, discussion and reflective learning. The final product was to create a condensed but informative digital revision resource that was interactive, accessible, and easily understood. Groups were able to decide on their resource format, from video, PowerPoint, mind map, or Word document. The three aims of this study were to monitor the effectiveness of the formative task in:

1. Consolidating and integrating knowledge, from other modules, into a disease setting

2. Encouraging students to collaborate, and to build a sense of community through the cohort

3. Developing transferable skills, such as effective communication, problem-solving, time management and team building.

In semester 1 of 19/20 the project ran as a pilot in one first-year module. In semester 2 of 19/20, and both semesters 1 and 2 of 20/21 and 21/22, the study was extended to three modules: foundation year, first year and second year Biomedical Science. In academic year 19/20 the project was run before the pandemic started. In all modules, the student output was assessed formatively. Formative assessments often pose challenges regarding uptake. However, the direct link to the summative assessment, through the creation of revision material and the development of transferable skills, bolstered student motivation. The formative assessment fed into the summative, even when exams moved from closed to open-book during the pandemic. The open-book questions tested the students’ application of knowledge, rather than simply their knowledge recall, mirroring requirements of the PBL task as students applied their knowledge to a disease setting. The questionnaire was given to the student after the modules had ended in the winter of 2021/2022.

Ethical Approval

The study was approved by the University of Sussex Research Ethics Committee (Reference: ER/PAOLO/1) before distribution of the questionnaire to the participants.

Rationale

The rationale behind this project was for the surface knowledge acquired in lectures and seminars to gain depth through the construction of revision resources. This process developed understanding, requiring students to make sense of what they had learned, ‘create meaning and make ideas their own’ (Hattie and Donoghue 2016). If we think of this project in relation to the cycle of knowledge construction, the ‘learner observes a moderately complicated situation, makes connections, and builds up relationships to produce more sophisticated conceptions’ (Pegg and Tall 2010). Having brought their knowledge together, students build upon their ability to evaluate, as they organise and filter material in order to produce digestible and accessible materials. As students make their thinking visible, they are given the opportunity to ‘explicitly monitor their own learning, which encourages reflection and more accurately models the scientific process’ (Slough and Milam 2013).

In addition to consolidating and evaluating their knowledge, the process of co-creation builds a sense of community and a cohort identity. Although students work in teams in core laboratory group work, the duration of these tasks are limited and the instructions are pre-written, lacking the need for open peer–peer dialogue (Poort, Jansen, and Hofman 2020). Another key difference to laboratory group work is that this task is undertaken outside of university contact hours, prompting students to manage their own time, organise meetings outside of the classroom without an academic facilitator, and therefore take ownership of their learning. It must be noted that the opportunity for collaboration via laboratory group work was removed by online teaching during COVID-19, making the collaborative benefits afforded by PBL even more important for the cohort of students affected by the pandemic.

The PBL task was aimed at foundation, first and second years and can be considered a “transition pedagogy’ that builds upon the abilities and knowledge that students have when entering university and, through the students’ construction of the resource, directs their development to the specific needs of HE assessment (Mouton 2019). These communal resources benefit all students, but particularly those who lack skills in creating concise revision materials by themselves. This task therefore promotes an ethos of collegiality, which is particularly pertinent to science subjects, whereby it is difficult to solve complex problems in isolation. As Bing et al. (2020) highlights, PBL introduces students to the benefits of collaboration early in their scientific careers (Bing et al. 2020).

Student activity

Students were given 3 weeks to complete the task. They were divided into random groups of three or four via University’s virtual learning environment. During the first 3 weeks, students were encouraged to meet at least four times, for 30 minutes to an hour for each meeting. Groups were encouraged to carry out some research on the topic, enabling them to engage with the subject area outside of given teaching materials. Students with learning differences were allowed to work on their own or choose a group member. This allowed for an inclusive experience.

In the beginning of the term (week one), students received one lecture introducing the module learning outcomes and the activity, which explained the benefits and challenges of the task, as well as providing evidence (students’ feedback) from previous courses where the task positively impacted students’ learning experience. Students were instructed to constructively align the learning outcomes from their lecture slides and weekly learning materials to the revision material.

An example of the activity completed by students in year 1:

Task: Produce a revision guide that describes what happens when Staphylococcus aureus bacterial antigen in staph infection is detected by our innate immune system. The guide should include the following details:

“bacterial cell structure, bacterial metabolism, assessment of the presence of bacteria in patients’ samples, the immune system, available antibiotics”

Students attended five lectures on microbiology between week 1 and 3 which covered all the aforementioned contents. In groups, students worked collaboratively and extracted key information from these lectures and applied to an infection, e.g. staph infection. This application of knowledge fed into their summative assessments such as lab practical report write up and final exam. Please see the flowchart below (Figure 1).

Figure 1. A flowchart describing the timeline and events during the PBL task.

Each group had a randomly pre-designated student chair, responsible for delegating tasks, communication and ensuring completion of the task. If a student chair declared that they were not confident enough to lead group meetings and activities, the tutor asked an alternative student to chair. On receiving the information in the first lecture, the designated chairing student organised weekly meetings. Students were provided with the following guidance for each meeting:

Meeting 1: Initial discussion to decide the type of revision material (e.g. slides, text document, mind map, or video), delegation of tasks and setting up a deadline.

Meeting 2: Feedback on content of revision material, consolidating knowledge, seeking clarity on difficult topics and raising any matters e.g. time commitments.

Meeting 3: Students share material produced with their peers prior to the meeting. In the meeting, they provide feedback to each other, identify missing links and gaps in knowledge and collaboratively contribute to completing the task.

Meeting 4: During the final meeting, students present their final product to each other, discuss any potential room for improvements, and then submit it for assessment.

These meeting lasted between 30 minutes and an hour and were carried out over 3 weeks. Students met with one another during face-to-face teaching and the COVID19 pandemic. For consistency, all information and activities remained the same in both learning environments, except that during the pandemic students had to organise their meetings online using a platform, such as Zoom.

Assessment and feedback

The group task was assessed formatively by two members of faculty. Students were provided with the non-contributory marking assessment criteria, which was based on the following:

• The clarity of presentation – information presented clearly with relevant figures and diagrams, labels and figure legends

• The detail and quality of content that sufficiently covers the key learning outcomes

• The creativity of the revision material, e.g. interactivity.

Students received constructive feedback in the sandwich method, whereby areas for improvement are situated between two pieces of positive feedback. This method has been shown to improve students’ performances as they are able to follow through and act on both positive and corrective feedback (Prochazka, Ovcari, and Durinik 2020). The task, outcomes and skills gained were discussed in a large group session in week 7 to reflect on the benefits and demonstrate an association with the upcoming summative assessments (see Figure 1).

Comparison of the overall module grades

Student results were compared in the two assessed modules before the task was introduced and after the task was introduced. A comparison was performed between the results obtained in those modules in academic year 2018/19 (before the task was introduced even as a pilot) and when the task ran in 2020/21 and 2021/22. Student results from these 3 years were collected through a school office database, anonymised and then compared to see whether students achieved higher module grades after the task was introduced. The results are presented as mean ± (standard deviation). It is important to note that the summative assessment methods changed from closed-book to open-book due to the COVID19 pandemic.

Questionnaire design

The student experience of the PBL task was assessed using a questionnaire, which allowed for both quantitative and qualitative data capture and analysis, was cost-effective and less time-consuming than a focus group or interviews (Adams and Cox 2008). The lack of in-depth, reflective answers, which is a disadvantage of questionnaire-style surveys, was overcome by open-ended questions (Mirzaei, Aliah Phang, and Kashefi 2014). The questionnaire provided free-text boxes, allowing participants to further comment on their chosen answers. These open-ended answers were utilised for qualitative analysis and used to complement quantitative data.

The quantitative element consisted of close-ended questions with ‘nominal scale’ (Choi and Pak 2005). Additionally, we used Likert-rating scale to quantitatively analyse students’ satisfaction, e.g. ‘How useful was this activity in consolidating your knowledge (0 being not useful and 5 being most useful)?’.

A literature review and a consultation amongst the authors of this paper and with colleagues informed the initial design of the questionnaire. This was followed by a pilot questionnaire among five students belonging to two different year groups within the Biomedical Science degree. The pilot questionnaire was conducted to assess whether students understood the questions and to evaluate the questions for their relevance and adequacy. Students were encouraged to provide feedback on the quality of the questionnaire, which was considered for further amendments.

Data generation and analysis

The questionnaire was administered to 304 students in years one and two who participated in the activity at least once. The sample size calculation with 95% confidence level (8% margin of error). This study received 103 responses (at a 34% rate). The wider margin of error was considered due to a lack of engagement observed during the pandemic. The questionnaire was set up on Qualtrics and circulated in the form of an email letter to all eligible participants. Students were provided with clear objectives of, and rationales for, the questionnaire to avoid ambiguity and differential understanding among the students. Students were given 1 month to complete the questionnaire with two reminders within the period.

Questionnaire data were collated from Qualtrics and transferred onto a spreadsheet. The data were reviewed and the PBL task evaluated in terms of its effectiveness in the following areas:

1. Consolidation and integration of knowledge

2. Community building

3. Development of transferable skills

The analyses were carried out both quantitatively and qualitatively. Cronbach’s alpha test confirmed the reliability of the data collected. The questions with nominal-scale answers such as ‘yes’, ‘not sure’ and ‘no’ were each assigned a score of 3, 2 and 1, respectively, for statistical analysis purposes. To measure consolidation of knowledge, we used the Likert scale (ranging from 1 to 5). For representation purposes, the data was normalised against the total number of participants per group. For instance, our collected data was further sorted into pre-COVID 19 and during COVID 19 to assess the impact of the task both in person and online, on consolidation and integration of learning and building a sense of community among students.

Students’ comments as open texts were reviewed, counted, and sorted for transferable skills. Based on these comments, the top six transferable skills were selected for further evaluation and discussion. The assessment of transferable/employability skills in the questionnaire was based on employability skills developed by STEMnet (STEMnet 2016).

The quantitative data was analysed using Mann Whitney U-test (non-parametric) using GraphPad Prism 8.0.1 (California, USA) and Microsoft Excel 2013 and a p value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Next, we analysed the size of the observed effects using the Cohen method (Lenhard and Lenhard 2016; Cohen 1988). Briefly, according to Cohen, the magnitude of size effects can be interpreted by ‘no effect’, ‘small effect’, ‘intermediate effect’ and ‘large effect’ (Table 1). Cohen’s d is determined by calculating the difference between the mean of two groups, and then dividing the result by the pooled standard deviation. Additionally, Kendall’s Tau correlation analysis (non-parametric) was conducted to assess associations between ‘sense of community’ and ‘knowledge integration’ and ‘consolidation of learning’. This analysis was performed using SPSS.

Table 1. Interpretation of different effect sizes.

Cohen’s d	Interpretation
<0	Adverse Effect
0	No Effect
0.1
0.2	Small Effect
0.3
0.4
0.5	Intermediate Effect
0.6
0.7
0.8	Large Effect
0.9
≥1.0

Results and discussion

In this section, we discuss the student assessment results and their responses to the questionnaire.

Assessment of overall grades of the modules

There is evidence that the overall grade of students in their final exams was positively impacted by the revision resource activity. In the first-year module, the students’ mean mark in their final examination increased from 67 (±14) in 2018/19 to 74 (±12) in 2020/21 and this mean mark was maintained in 2021/22 at 75 (±10). In the second-year module, a similar increase was observed: 68 (±14) from 2018/19 to 77 (±6) in 2020/21. This mean mark was also maintained in 2021/22 at 74 (±21). However, we are tentative in claims that the significant increase in student grades is correlated solely to the revision resource activity. There may have been other factors influencing this rise in marks including the general-grade inflation in response to the lockdown conditions. The researchers did not measure whether students achieved higher assessment grades on the topics covered by the PBL task as the aim was for students to collaboratively build application skills in microbiology, rather than develop their knowledge of the specific topic. The ability to apply knowledge will have benefited all topics covered by the assessment.

Questionnaire responses

Despite not directly contributing to the student grades, all groups submitted a revision guide and almost all students engaged in the activity or gave reasonable excuses for not doing so, such as illness. Of this, 34% responded to the questionnaire.

The questionnaire responses provided rich evidence that the PBL task improved knowledge integration from previous modules and experience and the consolidation of knowledge for deeper understanding. It provided evidence that it also created a sense of community between the students and provided them with transferable skills. The questionnaire also provided data on how learning was only marginally affected by the move online during COVID-19.

Knowledge integration and the consolidation of knowledge

The questionnaire results indicated that PBL can facilitate cumulative learning (Mouton 2019). The mean score from the question ‘Q16 – One aim for this activity was for you to consolidate and integrate your knowledge. How useful was this activity in consolidating your knowledge (0 being not useful and 5 being very useful)?’ was 4.1+-0.8, with most students scoring it 4 and 5 out of 5. Fifteen participants said that the exercise helped them contextualise their understanding. One student said:

By writing the answers to the questions in a style more suited for revision, it meant that I had to condense what I had learned in lectures with prior knowledge [from A-level] into a short and concise answer.

This comment describes progressive problem-solving, whereby the student is required to rethink what they already know in order to condense and prioritise information for revision purposes. The need to prioritise adds another level of complexity to the students’ knowledge acquisition and promotes academic development through enhancing critical thinking skills (Helle, Tynjälä, and Olkinuora 2006). Students appreciated the opportunity to integrate information with knowledge gained from outside the module. This response corroborates the research, which suggests that the integration of topics, whereby students develop a more holistic understanding of their subject, holds students’ interest to a greater degree than when topics are studied in isolation of one another (Elkhamisy, Hassan Zidan, and Fathelbab Fathelbab 2022). Seventy-four percent of students indicated their participation in the activity helped them integrate knowledge from previous modules and experiences. One said:

It really helped me understand the information and was really useful for my exams. Not only that it helped me integrate information from other modules to formulate a really useful document.

The application of knowledge requires students to consolidate knowledge and then create something from it. In the free-text comments, 14 participants said that the exercise allowed them to apply their knowledge. One student said:

We all applied our knowledge, taught each other in areas we felt confident in and shared ideas and understanding of the module.

Other students indicated that it was the group element of PBL that encouraged them to evaluate and consolidate their knowledge:

Explaining concepts is a really good way to ensure that you understand them properly, which helped to consolidate our knowledge.

Another explained:

We were able to discuss concepts raised in lectures that we did not fully understand and learn from each other, further reinforcing our knowledge on the topics.

Students were undergoing ‘semantic waves’ where they start with an abstract concept or questioning followed by a descending wave of unpacking knowledge and information (Mouton 2019). This results in students making sense of the complex concepts and then using technical language to explain these concepts to each other in a way that is meaningful to them and in more detail. Next, in the ascending wave, students repack knowledge and link back to the abstract concept. Through peer–peer teaching and listening, students learn considerably more compared to the didactic formal lecturing (Mouton 2019).

It appears that the consolidation and integration of learning and knowledge were not affected by the pandemic (Table 1). For instance, 55% of participants during COVID 19 scored this activity 4 out of 5, with a mean of 4 ± 0.8 (SD) which was slightly higher than the score received for the pre-COVID 19 activity. This may have been because students were able to study and prepare materials at their own pace, confined in their home environment, with limited social contacts due to government-led lockdowns (Gonzalez et al. 2020).

Sense of community

Sixty-six percent of the student participants felt that the PBL tasks enabled them to build a cohort identity, with 23% and 11% answered ‘unsure’ and ‘no’, respectively. One participant said in free-text comments that it was ‘a way to get to know other people that are in my course’. Another stated: ‘it enabled me to talk to people I wouldn’t have normally spoken to’.

In addition to the immediate benefits to community, the PBL task resulted in long-term positive impacts. A year after completing the task, one student said: ‘we got to know each other a little better and even today I am in contact with some of them’. Another wrote: ‘Our group is still active, we share our concerns and struggles, although we never met one another’, indicating that through this virtual group activity students maintained a sense of community throughout their academic year.

There were 16 free-text comments indicating that the exercise encouraged the students to communicate with each other about the topic. The student responses suggested that communicating with peers had a positive influence on their understanding. One student said:

It was nice working with peers that I haven’t talked to before and getting to know them and knowing we could help each other out.

Collaboration is a vital skill for the sciences, particularly when working as team in a laboratory, where problem-solving often happens via collaboration and peer–peer learning.

Collaboration highlights the importance of using a comprehensive common language, which encourages students to recognise gaps in their knowledge. One student reflected:

Producing content to learn from forces individuals to write/produce work in a way that they understand, using terminology that they are familiar with and learning new terms.

In PBL, students identify gaps in knowledge by actively engaging with materials from multiple perspectives, enhancing a deep, and often more nuanced, understanding of the content (Millis 2014).

We assessed whether the student’s sense of community was impacted by COVID 19. Seventy-five percent of the student participants who took part before the pandemic felt that the tasks enabled them to build a cohort identity, with 19% and 6% answering ‘unsure’ and ‘no’, respectively. This was slightly affected during the pandemic with 59% felt that they were able to build a sense of community, with 26% and 15% answered ‘not sure’ and ‘no’, respectively. In our effect size analysis, we found that building a sense of community was slightly affected (d = 0.302) (Table 2). This seemed unavoidable as for many students, physical presence is a significant factor that contributes to creating a cohort identity (Drouin and Rae Vartanian 2010). Although community was slightly affected, knowledge consolidation and integration were not impacted by the move online during the pandemic (Table 2).

Table 2. A comparative effect size for three parameters between ‘during’ and ‘pre-COVID 19’.

	U value	d value	P value	Interpretation
Sense of comm	4136	0.302	0.0113a	Small effect
Consolidation	4504	0.172	0.1781	no effect
Integration	4624	0.004	0.2198	no effect

^asignificant

We also investigated whether a sense of community had any association with how students scored on knowledge integration and consolidation of knowledge. Results indicated that collaborative and peer-to-peer learning can deepen learning (Han et al. 2021), as demonstrated by the Kendall Tau correlation values that revealed a positive association between the parameters and were closer to 1 during pre-COVID 19 activity (Table 3). This indicates that working together as a team helps students integrate knowledge and consolidate learning both during COVID 19 and pre-COVID 19.

Table 3. Kendall Tau Correlations to investigate associations between ‘Sense of community’ and ‘knowledge integration’ and ‘Consolidation of knowledge’.

	Sense of community
Variables	During COVID	Pre-COVID
Knowledge integration	0.773916	0.852879
Consolidation of knowledge	0.697336	0.808608

Transferable skills

The term transferable skills has been used to describe the skills that students practice that are relevant to their studies but are also relevant to other contexts (Barnes 2020). In this PBL task, the aim was for students to create a revision resource for one another. To do so, they not only needed to understand the topic but also needed to use a host of other skills, including communication, problem solving, time management and teamwork. It should be noted that the acquisition of these transferable skills was not objectively assessed but self-reported by the students via the survey, and therefore subject to misconception.

In pre-lockdown teaching, the practicing of transferable skills sometimes happened organically through peer communication after class or in social situations. During lockdown, this was less likely as students were often studying in isolation from their peers. The results indicate that PBL provided opportunities for students to practice transferable skills even during lockdown conditions.

The following sub-headings are transferable skills that students, via the questionnaire, recognised as being developed from the PBL task and as important graduate attributes.

Communication skills

The PBL task required the students to regularly meet with their group to communicate their ideas and concerns with regards to the project. In addition, amongst the group students presented their product upon its completion, and at various stages of creation. One student stated that communication was a key skill they had developed through the activity:

It helped me communicate my findings with others and the public in a clear and concise manner.

While some scholars have noted that students may not see the relevance of communication skills (Mello and Wattret 2021), the questionnaire provided evidence that the students were fully aware of the importance of this skill. Sixty-seven percent of respondents cited communication as an important skill to acquire for graduate employment, with one student stating:

Scientists need to be able to effectively communicate the results of any research conducted for future reference.

Throughout the questionnaire, there was significant acknowledgement that communication skills improved through the PBL task, with the majority of students citing it as the most important skill they got out of the exercise.

Problem solving and critical thinking

The students were presented with a problem that they needed to solve through critical thinking: how could they combine and condense what they had learnt into a revision resource and how would the information be selected and presented? Students had to work like active research professionals (Boyle and Trevitt 2006) to complete the task. One student stated:

As a scientist you need to be able to assess information from different sources.

In order to create digestible and engaging revision resources, students had to be creative in their approach to presenting scientific information, relying heavily on the visualisation of facts. The questionnaire suggested that students enjoyed this challenge as it helped them realise that ‘imagination and science are not antonymous’. As students ‘think outside the box’ and embrace the creative challenges that come with PBL, they develop an open mindset deemed essential for future scientists (Rossi et al. 2021).

Time management

Requiring students to work together on a project is time-consuming, making time management an important skill for PBL (Affandi and Sukyadi 2016). Many respondents to the questionnaire stated that the task required the ability to be organised. One student said:

[Time management and organisation] are really key skills I enriched through this project, which will help me succeed as a science graduate and will always have to manage my time well in order to meet deadlines and be organised in doing so.

Another commented:

The ability to meet deadlines is also essential as in an academic [or] work setting is vital [in order] to be organized and to present your work in the appropriate way and on time.

Several students reflected that PBL would benefit them in a STEM graduate job market, with one student stating:

As a science graduate … meeting deadlines can be important to achieve long-term targets in industry

There are several reasons why time management is challenging for some students, for example certain neurodiverse students and students with caring responsibilities. In an attempt to offset these challenges, the module tutor should help students break down the task into smaller steps and monitor progress (Soares and Vannest 2013). Student feedback reflected this need, as students recommended that going forward, the tutor should create ‘clear deadlines’, while another suggested that student progress should be ‘monitored individually’ in order to ensure that some students do not get left behind.

Teamwork and leadership

When students are required to produce something collaboratively in a PBL task, they must engage effectively with their group (Bing et al. 2020). By establishing healthy relationships with others, the student creates the conditions for knowledge sharing and growth. The task helped develop teamwork and communication skills. One student said:

Leadership, communication and teamwork are very important for a science graduate because there is a lot of collaborative work in science e.g., peer review. Nearly every job requires good communication so activities like this help us prep for the ‘real world’.

The task encouraged students to reflect upon the importance of teamwork, with one student commenting:

Science is most easily approached when many ideas come together, working together towards one goal, teamwork is therefore essential.

Another said:

Teamwork is vital because sharing ideas with your peers can help in any projects as combining different points of views for looking at a problem helps to achieve a better solution.

Although teamwork is important, it is not always easy to achieve. One potential reason is differences in status that could lead to domination by members with more authoritative behaviour (Brooks 1994). In creating this revision material, which was largely a self-directed and off-the-classroom task, it was challenging for a tutor to ensure that less-vocal students are able to participate as equally as dominating students. Although this was partially addressed in the beginning of the project, by informing the chair of each group to ensure equal participation and delegation, supervision was still necessary to ensure students’ interaction, greater exchange of ideas and thus learning (O’Donnell 2006). Since a tutor-led supervision was not possible, students who did not feel part of a team were able to switch groups or create their own groups. In addition to this flexibility, one student recommended that there should be a consequence for any group members who choose not to do any work, as it has a negative impact on those who are trying to work together.

One way to provide a consequence for this lack of engagement is to convert the activity into a summative assessment and introduce peer marking. Graded assessments provide students with the incentive to put more effort into completing their assignments. Additionally, peer marking has been shown to improve individual member’s contributions. Going forward, peer marking may introduce with holistic rubrics that identify ‘very good’ and ‘very weak’ contributions with adjustable calculations of an individual’s contribution to maximise the correlation between actual group scores and true levels of a student’s contribution (Chang, Brickman, and Tanner 2018).

Another potential difficulty with teamwork is that group members can experience a cognitive overload when facing unstructured tasks (Dreu, Carsten, and Weingart 2003). Thus, a leadership role is encouraged in facilitating team learning behaviour (Koeslag-Kreunen et al. 2018) which can influence peers, both individually and collectively, to understand and agree about task goal and required activities to accomplish shared objectives (Yukl 2010) p. 8). The questionnaire provided evidence that students recognised the importance of leadership. One student said:

having a leader of a group helps members stay organised, not slack on their work, and make sure everything is done on time.

A leadership role could also contribute to building social relationships and a sense of community, overcoming barriers such as feeling insecure in expressing opposing views and opinions (Wong, Tjosvold, and Jiafang 2010). Leadership is an important skill for students to practice, particularly within the sciences, which will often require collaborative work (Somech 2006).

Limitations of the study and potential solutions

The study had several limitations. As discussed in the section above, this activity was labelled as a formative assessment and therefore a handful of second-year students participating for the first time did not engage with it at the expected level. This is probably because students at level 5 were aware of the grades they want to achieve and so mainly focussed on summative assessments. One student said:

I think this is an incredibly useful tool, however, I think if it were graded work, it would mean students engage better.

Engagement barriers may have also been due to a lack of coordination and collaboration between students. For instance, one student said

We actually don’t contact as the way I expected. I always messaged and they usually just didn’t reply.

Self-directed group activities benefit from continuous engagement across modules (Kyungbin, Liu, and Johnson 2014; Isohätälä, Järvenoja, and Järvelä 2017). This was observed among some of those students who participated twice in the task. These students were more engaged the second time and understood the benefit of this activity in their learning better than students that only did it once, as reflected in students’ comments:

Having completed this task before the previous year, I understood what was expected of these resources e.g., getting in all the key points. Also, I managed to tailor it more so to my revision by including additional concepts from other parts of the module.

This resonates with a study by Strauß and Rummel (2021), where early collaboration and interaction in group activities resulted in more even participation and greater satisfaction (Strauß and Rummel 2021)

Another limitation of the study was the inability to certify its positive impact on student grades due to the fact that the UK HE sector saw a general increase in grades of around 7% to 8% for students who completed their modules during lockdown, due to differences in assessment practices and the introduction of the ‘no detriment’ policy (Hale 2021). This sector-wide grade inflation made it impossible to directly compare outcomes for students before and after they undertook the task.

Conclusion

The authors of this paper were pleasantly surprised at the amount of positive feedback the task received from students. The research indicated that the task did everything it set out to do in terms of contributing the students’ learning: it helped students consolidate their knowledge from previous learning, build a sense of community and develop transferable skills. The authors postulate that the effectiveness of the task was on account of the fact that it did not contribute to the final grade and hence was not resisted by students who feel the pressure of extra assessments but was clearly aligned to the summative assessments and students could clearly see how doing it would benefit their final grade.

This study also supports research by Haque et al. (2020), which indicated the effectiveness of project work was similar pre and post lockdown, suggesting that the success of a PBL task is not affected by whether it is done in-person or online, so long as there are clear tasks and the capability for students to meet synchronously online (Haque et al. 2020). We suggest the difficulties in organising group work under lockdown conditions was counterbalanced by the increase in perceived need for group work felt by students.

Examination grades were seen to increase from a 2:1 to a first degree in the years that the revision resource task was set. Although this activity was not the only factor that was changed in the module, there may be a positive correlation between assessment grades and student engagement in this formative activity. In order to be conclusive in this claim, further research is needed outside of lockdown conditions.

One potential contributor to the rise in grades could be that PBL encouraged students to integrate discipline knowledge that they had developed both during, and outside of, the module. The questionnaire results indicated that the task facilitated cumulative learning, while also teaching students to be selective when deciding what information was relevant for the revision resource and what could be omitted, requiring students to approach material critically behave like active research professionals (Boyle and Trevitt 2006).

The group work element was deeply valued by students for its development of transferable skills. The fact the task was not summatively assessed may have helped avoid group tensions because the assessment was perceived as relatively low-stakes (Chang, Brickman, and Tanner 2018). However, the lack of a summative grade had a negative impact on engagement for some second-year students, who were more focused on direct contributions towards their final grades. Going forward, the task may be changed from formative to summative in an attempt to boost student motivation.

Acknowledgments

This paper is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend Dr Stephen Hare for their contribution in the project-based learning task.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.