Students' Point Of View of Real-Life Project-based Learning

Project-based learning (PBL) is known to be effective because learning is driven by active engagement and collaboration. Real-life projects are known to be motivating for students as they work on authentic problems to address societal issues. Teachers sometimes hesitate to implement them because of time constraints and doubts about whether course learning will be fulfilled. This paper is students’ point of view of experience in developing a real-life online training program for Persons with Disability (PwD) awareness in an Instructional Systems Design (ISD) course. Students developed this training program in three phases, conducted a user study and reflected on their experiences. The user study results of the training program indicate that the developed content is useful for sensitization regarding the challenges faced by PwD and awareness of how to support them. The reflections indicate that it is possible to tackle real-life projects within the framework of a course without compromising on course objectives. Students’ reflections proved that conceptual learning of the course topics was also achieved along with project development skills. This study is meaningful because it demonstrated the value of real-life project-based learning despite the time constraints of project execution.