Centre for PBL & Sustainability

The political pressure is ever more distinct to provide sustainable scientific and technological transformations to decouple the increase in problematic environmental and social impacts from economic growth, and secure a balance between the three pillars of sustainability.

Problem and Project Based Learning (PBL) has been shown to be an effective framework for educating engineers and scientists capable of solving complex tasks in a collaborative framework. In a Centre for PBL and sustainability (PBL-SUS) we wish to research and develop PBL methods for integrating Sustainability into Engineering and Science Education to foster sustainable scientific and technological innovations and transformations.

We believe that the PBL philosophy embrace critical and creative inquiry; reflective and iterative learning; an indicative and open curriculum; learning in groups, organisations and communities; a democratic and participative environment; that an ecological paradigm for education is characterised by development and action-orientation. (Inspired by Sterling (2004))

At Aalborg University, 35 years experience in educating Science and Engineering students in a PBL environment has been accumulated, and The UNESCO chair in PBL in Engineering and Science education has the vision of furthering this by researching the possibilities for using PBL as a framework for enhancing ESD within this field. In 2009 the vision of establishing a Centre for PBL and Sustainability under the UNESCO chair of PBL became reality with funding assistance from the Danish Obel fond.