Challenge-Based Learning And Constructive Alignment: A Challenge For Information Systems’ Educators

Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) is an emerging approach to the design of education activities known for its benefits in fostering student engagement and, consequently, positively affecting their learning outcomes. For the educator, the ’challenge in the challenge’ is to guarantee that the CBL-based education design follows certain regulations, like ensuring proper curriculum coverage with Constructive Alignment. This challenge becomes particularly difficult to address in the field of Information Systems, within Computer Science, where multiple practices can be followed to solve the same problem. This is even more challenging when CBL is applied at course-level, where the curriculum of the course focuses on a subset of those practices. This paper targets two central questions for the educators willing to apply CBL while complying with Constructive Alignment in their course design: (1) How to ensure that the results based on solutions designed to address student-defined challenges are successfully aligned to the course’s intended learning outcomes? (2) How to use these results as evidence of learning and as an assessment component? We discuss our experience and lessons learned applying CBL for the redesign and execution of the Smart Industry Systems course of the University of Twente, while ensuring proper curriculum coverage and compliance with Constructive Alignment.