Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
YÜKSEKÖĞRETIM DERGISI, cilt.2, sa.3, ss.159-166, 2012 (Hakemli Dergi)
While adopting a particular teaching/learning method to be practiced at higher education, the overall aim has to be taken into consideration. The prevalent view reveals that the undergraduate, when having completed higher education, is assumed to have been equipped with general intellectual abilities and perspectives; higher order thinking and higher order cognitive abilities; and intellectual transferable skills to be activated as elements providing and triggering functionality in interpersonal relations, teamwork, problem-solving, decision-making, effective communication, and leadership. It should also be kept in mind that the recent trends seem to have shifted from theory to practice, from specific to general, and from general educational aims to general transferable competencies. Particularly, since the last quarter of the 20th century, a great wealth of studies on cognitive and educational psychology has favored active and cooperative learning methods. In pursuit of more effective means of education, certain effortful investigations have pointed out that shifting from the conventional teaching methods to active learning would promote the quality of higher maritime education. As a consequence, since 2002, problem-based learning has been adopted, improved and supplemented by task-based learning and project-based learning at Dokuz Eylül University Maritime Faculty. The purpose of this study is to clarify how such a change in higher maritime education has been managed. A thorough literature review providing cognitive support to this shift is briefed in the Introduction. Each of the other sections of this study describes the learning activities practiced along with an overall evaluation, pros and cons, of the miscellaneous adoption of the three instructional methods. Although each of the mentioned three instructional methods has quite widely been adopted and implemented by many European higher educational institutions particularly since mid 20th century, implementing a combination of them in such a manner that they supplement one another could be considered to be quite a new approach. Hence, this study is believed to set a courageous example that worths a try for the other higher maritime education institutions.