Our unique designs prepare students to participate fully and productively in today's technology-based workplaces. The key skills listed include critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, verbal and written communication, ability to research, and lifelong learning. To meet this concern and help students become more independent and interdependent learners, we have adopted cooperative learning techniques and developed learning communities so students are required to make connections among courses. These strategies do move us along a continuum toward self-directed and Problem-Based learning. Problem-based learning (PBL) is a curriculum development and instructional system that simultaneously develops both problem-solving strategies and disciplinary knowledge bases and skills by placing students in the active role of problem-solvers confronted with an ill-structured problem that mirrors real-world problems.

Research shows that PBL will increase retention of knowledge, help students transfer concepts to new problems, enhance student interest in the content, and enhance self-directed learning. The problems used in our program will consist of a series of common, important and ill-structured problems (ill-structured so there will be multiple solutions). These are designed by our experienced trainers. These problems will be carefully selected so their solutions will encompass the degree competencies. Students will test their solutions in a real-world lab provided by our trainers. After solving a problem as a team, individuals will then be given another problem to solve on their own in order to demonstrate how well they have met the competencies covered in each problem.

Solving real-world problems changes the student and faculty roles. Because students are engaged by the relevant problem, they "own" the problem and much of the learning process is turned over to the student. During small group meeting, students define the problem, identify what they know, and then discover the concepts, principles and skills they need to know to solve the problem. What they need to know becomes the "learning issues" they focus on to solve the problem.