This study explores first-year university students’ perceptions of psychological safety, team creativity, and academic well-being in problem-based learning (PBL) teams at Aalborg University, where PBL is systematically implemented. These constructs are vital for fostering effective collaboration and positive academic outcomes, yet their interrelations in educational contexts remain underexplored. A survey was administered to 893 students across STEM and Health programs, using validated instruments for psychological safety, team creativity, and academic well-being. Results indicate moderate to strong correlations among the three constructs, underscoring the interplay and connection between psychological safety, team creativity and academic well-being in team settings. Gender and program-based differences were examined, revealing small but significant distinctions, such as higher team creativity scores among STEM students and greater psychological safety reported by male students. These findings highlight the importance of fostering trust and inclusivity within PBL teams, particularly for students transitioning to university-level education. This study contributes to understanding the interplay between psychological safety, creativity, and academic well-being in collaborative learning environments and highlights the need for further research to explore both the development and distribution of these critical concepts, especially during students’ transition to higher education.

The increasing complexity of society's sustainability issues requires new educational approaches that facilitate transversal skills and competencies suitable for the 21st century. Students must be equipped with discipline-specific expertise or technical skill; but also competencies to collaborate across disciplines in creating innovative solutions to complex problems. This paper explores whether a problem-based learning environment focusing on creativity facilitates transdisciplinary engagement and creative competencies and to what extent this manifests into transdisciplinary career paths and creative mindsets in a life-long learning perspective. An analysis of interviews with graduates from a transdisciplinary program, Creative Genius, at Aalborg University indicates that a pedagogical approach focusing on the embodiment of creative competencies helps prepare students to transition from student to professional and equip them to engage in transdisciplinary and complex problem-solving in industry and society. Based on the results, the paper proposes a model for creative transdisciplinary thinking and suggests a focus on creative self-efficacy as an essential learning outcome in transdisciplinary PBL environments.

Academic well-being is often examined as an individual condition or support need, but less is known about how students construct well-being during transition into demanding pedagogical environments. This qualitative study explores how first-semester students in a Danish Problem-Based Learning (PBL) university understood and sustained academic well-being. Semi-structured interviews with 17 students from health-related and engineering/technology-related programs were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings show that academic well-being was experienced as transition work: students made academic demands meaningful through relevance and purpose, developed confidence through emerging competence, negotiated support and vulnerability in teamwork, and managed autonomy within pedagogical and institutional structures. The study contributes to higher education research by showing how academic well-being emerges through interactions among intrapersonal resources, peer collaboration, and learning environments. It argues that transition support in PBL contexts should scaffold autonomy, collaboration, belonging, and academic meaning-making rather than treating well-being as an individual student responsibility alone.

STEM teaching is a promising approach to increase student interest in science across educational levels as it integrates disciplines in engaging ways mirroring real-world applications, emphasizing practices such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and hands-on engineering design. However, teachers’ approaches to implementing STEM teaching can vary significantly, depending on available resources, experience, subject, and contextual factors. The STEMification model is a design and planning tool developed in the LabSTEM North project to support teachers´ professional development in STEM teaching. STEMification describes a teaching approach where students engage in science subjects and/or mathematics through inquiry-based learning (IBL) and/or problem-based learning (PBL) processes, involving experiential and collaborative STEM practices necessary to answer the students’ own questions related to the topic. In this paper, we use the model as a mapping tool to explore ways in which high school science teachers apply PBL and IBL principles in their STEM teaching. Applying the model as a mapping tool during interviews helped teachers visualize and compare different IBL/PBL principles combined with diverse approaches to develop STEM teaching. The mapping also helped in redesigning the STEMification model, aiming to make it more applicable as a STEM teaching design and planning tool.

This chapter advances a systems approach to transferable skills in engineering education, using Aalborg University’s project-organised problem-based learning (PBL) model as a central case. It highlights key competencies — complex problem solving, project management, leadership, collaboration, co-creation, interdisciplinarity, and professional identity, and professional agency — as essential for addressing contemporary challenges. Drawing on three decades of research, the chapter shows how these skills can be cultivated through authentic problems, project work, and teamwork. Each competency is defined, grounded in theory and empirical evidence, and illustrated with examples from practice, along with typical challenges and practical guidance for educators. Together, the chapter argues that PBL supports progressive, authentic, and reflective competency development. It concludes with research-informed recommendations for embedding transferable skills in engineering programmes, emphasising constructive alignment, scaffolding, interdisciplinarity, psychological safety, and real-world engagement to prepare adaptable, collaborative, and agentic engineers.