Smart Pedagogy: Challenge-Based Learning in Graduate Computing Curriculum

The application of Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) has increased in higher education institutions in several recent years, fostering student skills, competencies, knowledge of sociotechnical problems, and team-working skills. In general, CBL is an evolving new flexible framework that may have various implementations in different applied areas, hybrid approaches to teaching, new types of design and development of educational solutions, and numerous aspects and types of implementations in higher education. This paper presents the current outcomes of the on-going research, design and development project at the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) and the InterLabs Research Institute at Bradley University (Peoria, IL, USA) that is aimed to identify and test the optimal ways to implement CBL in in graduate computing curriculum. It describes the obtained data-driven research outcomes, including (a) summaries of student surveys to get student perception about quality of CBL-based graduate courses, (b) student opinion about “smartness” features of CBL-based smart pedagogy, including adaptation, sensing, inferring, self-learning, anticipation, and self-optimization, and (c) student recommendations about the improvements of design, development, teaching and offering of CBL-based smart pedagogy and courses in graduate computing curriculum.