ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1618997
University Students' Subjective Experiences with Problem-Based Learning and Associated Generic Skills
Provisionally accepted
- 1Graduate School of Education, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
- 2Department of Education, College of Humanities, Sejong University, Seoul, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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With the rapid change in society and advancements in technology, higher education needs to focus on cultivating students' generic skills, which foster adaptability and employability in an ever-evolving society. Problem-based learning (PBL) has been acknowledged as an effective approach to enhancing generic skills. The current study explored the subjective experiences of university students' PBL participation to identify generic skills associated with their learning. University students' reflection papers were used as document data for analysis. A total of 58 reflection papers were collected from three PBL courses offered at a 4-year university in Seoul, Korea, between 2022 and 2023. These papers contained detailed accounts of students' learning experiences across all phases of PBL, guided by open-ended questions. The content of the papers was analyzed by applying inductive thematic analysis, which revealed four key themes related to students' experience with PBL: collaboration within the team, personal growth, higher-order thinking, and connection to the real world. These themes were discussed in relation to associated generic skills. The findings offer insights into students' experiences during the PBL process and highlight the ways in which these experiences foster the development of various skills. By inductively exploring students' subjective experiences and deriving relevant skills from these experiences, this study contributes to the existing body of research that has predominantly focused on quantitatively measuring students' changes after PBL or examining only specific competencies.
Keywords: Problem-Based Learning, higher education, university students, Learning experience, generic skills, document analysis
Received: 27 Apr 2025; Accepted: 18 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lee and Jung. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Eunju Jung, Department of Education, College of Humanities, Sejong University, Seoul, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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