A Proposed Case-Based Learning Framework for Fostering Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Creative and Critical Thinking

Scholars and international bodies have highlighted the need to foster undergraduate engineering students’ creative thinking and critical thinking. Case-based learning is a name for a host of pedagogical approaches which are student-centered, requiring the instructor to act as an expert guide rather than as a source of knowledge. These approaches make use of cases, thus contextualizing learning of discipline or practice-specific knowledge. This approach can help facilitate students’ development of conceptual understanding and thinking skills, as students work through and reflect on the process of solving cases. Despite the learning benefits of case-based learning, it has not often been implemented in undergraduate engineering education when compared with project- or problem-based learning. This paper outlines our proposal for a case-based learning pedagogical framework which aims to foster undergraduate engineering students’ creative and critical thinking. The framework provides scaffolding of the learning process for students using a sequence of case-based learning implementations with varying levels of student autonomy. We begin by providing a theoretical background on problem-solving in engineering, creative thinking, and critical thinking, followed by a review of case-based learning in undergraduate engineering education. Next, we outline our proposed pedagogical framework, including guidelines for instructional design and implementation, as well as practical examples. We then discuss the contributions and limitations of our work. Finally, we discuss potential challenges associated with the implementation of our framework and potential mitigations. This work offers theoretical and practical contributions for developing undergraduate engineering students’ creative and critical thinking.