Teaching STEM subjects through project-based learning (PBL) in a global classroom offers a transformative educational experience that equips students with both technical skills and global competencies. This paper explores the integration of PBL in Biomedical Science education across diverse, international settings, highlighting its impact on student engagement, cross-cultural understanding, and collaborative problem-solving. By connecting students from different regions through virtual platforms, a global classroom provides opportunities to work on real-world projects that address global challenges, such as, access to healthcare, public health, etc. This paper presents our work-in-progress global classroom programme, developed in collaboration with an Indian higher education institution and grounded in the project-based learning (PBL) teaching model. It explores the tools that facilitate effective PBL in a global context, alongside potential challenges and strategies for successful implementation. The proposed model, which is adaptable to other STEM disciplines, highlights the importance of incorporating a global perspective into STEM education, equipping students with the skills and knowledge needed to navigate and contribute to an increasingly interconnected world.

Understanding students' academic profiles and skillsets is crucial for personalized guidance in higher education. In transnational education (TNE) programmes, large student cohorts and time zone differences often complicate the allocation process of final year projects. To address these challenges, a project recommendation framework was developed. Using latent semantic analysis (LSA), students' academic profiles are summarized into skillsets, which are then matched with project requirements. This framework was deployed in a TNE programme between Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT). Quantitative results show that 80% of students using the framework secured a project on the first day of the allocation process, compared to 64% in a previous cohort without the tool, effectively shortening the allocation timeline. Qualitative feedback indicates high student satisfaction, emphasizing the tool's ease of use and relevance, as well as its ability to help students identify projects aligned with their academic profiles and interests. These findings reflect the framework's potential to streamline project allocation, reduce administrative workload, and enhance student support in project allocation. Moreover, the student skillsets generated by the framework can support broader applications, including employability analysis, academic profiling, and strategic decision-making to enhance institutional processes and student outcomes.

The capstone project is a crucial element of a degree programme and plays a vital role in the growth of learners, as it enables them to enhance their problem-solving skills and improve their employability prospects. In addition to this, the project provides the learners with an opportunity to demonstrate and showcase their critical thinking abilities and creativity. However, due to the year-long independent nature of these projects, learners can disengage due to a lack of motivation or self-regulated skills throughout the project. To address this problem, we formulated a data-driven intervention approach that conducts learner engagement analytics to identify and support disengaged learners, ensuring they maximise the benefits of completing a capstone project. The motivation was also to provide these learners with the necessary resources and support to get them back on track. This approach was implemented in the capstone projects conducted by learners at Queen Mary University of London within the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. Based on the data of the three cohorts in 2020–21, 2021–22 and 2022–23, our analysis shows that the proposed data-driven intervention approach for capstone projects can effectively identify less-engaged learners and targeted interventions are shown to improve the overall performance of these less-engaged learners on capstone projects.