An Online Approach to Project-Based Learning in Engineering and Technology for Post-secondary Students

In this work, we present an active digital learning environment to support undergraduate research-based education in an online environment in the Biotechnology program, as part of the iThink program that is part of the PIVOT initiative. Specifically, the students were tasked to demonstrate an open-ended objective using the biosensor technology for organic sample detection. To do this in an online environment, students undertook the research and development of their experiments by learning the laboratory techniques using online lab exercises and evolving the research in a collaborative online environment. Their progress was recorded throughout the academic year via weekly assignments, review of the content relating to the weekly deliverables, online interactive lab simulations, and lab reports with detailed technical content relating to their experiments. As with the in-person format, the iThink project continues to teach the concepts to the students from the highest levels of the Bloom’s taxonomy. An evaluation of the effectiveness of the iThink program in an online setting showed that the performance of the students in the online setting was similar to that of the students in the in-person format.