Can a Picture Paint a Thousand Words? Visualising Variety in Challenge-Based Learning

Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) is an educational approach that involves students engaging with peers, academics, and external stakeholders to collaboratively investigate and develop solutions to real-world challenges of urgency and significance. One of the strengths of CBL is that it is a flexible framework that can be adapted to suit the educational discipline and local context. As CBL becomes applied in more disciplines, there are opportunities to learn from those implementing it which can stimulate new ways of approaching certain aspects. Staff members developing and disseminating guidance to support CBL at one Irish university therefore initiated a project to co-develop a set of visually-oriented examples of different varieties of CBL in practice that could be shared with those new to the concept. In particular, the project aimed to highlight different scenarios of external stakeholder involvement within CBL projects. This case study describes the history and thinking behind the initiative and shares the six visuals representing CBL implementation in various contexts that emerged.