The Future of Education

The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the way in which Challenge-Based Learning can be applied to a course in Project Management which the author of this assignment teaches, since it was introduced, starting with the academic year 2023-2024, and continuing with 2024-2025, for the Translators and Interpreters specialization, undergraduate level, within the Department of Foreign Languages and Communication at the Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest, Romania. It can be directly considered in connection with the growing popularity of working on projects as team members or as project managers in all domains of activity. The work of institutions such as corporations, companies, universities, and even schools and highschools depends on projects or is organized based on project work. Everything can now be considered a project, including the way the university itself functions, as team work is required in all areas, curriculum development and attraction of future students being one of them. Collaboration with other institutions is also a common reality nowadays, from the country and from abroad. Therefore, the connection between the real world, between the current style of working nowadays is very clear, and the theoretical knowledge should be adapted for practical purposes accordingly. Since students need to be familiarized with knowledge of the world during the Project Management course, using CBL to teach them is a solution adapted to the needs asked of them by the standards set up by the European Union, which include planning and forecasting, risk management, budgeting, tracking and monitoring, meeting facilitation, subject matter expertise, leadership, communication, collaboration, time management, and problem solving. Preparation for future careers is a basic component of the learning process. Since we live in a country that is a EU member, this influences the skills asked of students by the end of their learning and for their jobs. Project management may not necessarily be a profession in itself, but a skill, since likely they are going to be faced with EU funded projects, e.g. Horizon Europe. CBL is the best way to practice hypothetical scenarios, which are included in the activities in the second part of the course, as in the first part the author of this assignment presents students with the theoretical notions which they can afterwards apply in the practical activities. This is because CBL, as it is structured in three phases: engage, investigate and act looks like the best way to help students practice all the skills needed for project management. The CBL phases echo the phases of a project, with which students will be familiarized during the course: “initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closure,” all of which “combine to turn a project idea into a working product” (Kissflow Inc., 2025). Within CBL, the engage phase includes three components: big idea, essential question, and challenge. The engage phase asks learners to start from an abstract idea, which is the big idea. The big idea helps keep students connected to the real world, its structure and requirements, based on the values of today. It serves as a starting point for the project, based on the values and on the big issue in today’s world with which students wish to engage, for example environmental concerns,  relationships, creativity, community, democracy, health, and others. The essential question serves as a beginning point to start the project, and it offers a way to connect the big idea, which is “important in the learner’s context and the larger community” to “a concrete and actionable challenge” (The Challenge Institute, 2018), based on questions such as the ones related to the importance of the big idea to the students’ personal interests as well as their community’s needs. The big idea starts from the context of today’s world and moves on to the essential question, which is about the way in which students relate to today’s world and adapt to it. The challenge serves to convert the essential question “into a call to action to learn deeply about the subject” (The Challenge Institute, 2018).