COURSE INTRODUCTION TO A CHALLENGE-BASED CURRICULUM USING CHALLENGE BASED LEARNING (CBL)

Abstract

At the dental education at Malmö University, a need for improving the scaffolding strategies to support the dental students’ entry to higher education and to increase the sense of belonging to their education was identified. Therefore, a new course introduction was designed with learning activities following

three core design principles. The principles were: an introduction to the small study groups that the student would be part of during the entire first semester, a series of challenges within meaningful and specific areas, and challenges relatively easy to solve as a group. The challenges were thematized and covered getting to know the building where most of their studies will take place, the websites that are intented to be used for the students at the university, Challenge-based learning, Malmö University facilities, and finaly to reflect on what they had experienced during the week in relation to their upcoming studies. The new course introduction seemed beneficial for the students to get to know each other and their learning environment. The design was easy to implement, did not require much resources, and harmonized well with our expectations on student activities within the course. In our experience, CBL is a suitable approach for a course introduction.