It's nearly 2 years since I started playing around with the idea that we should extend what the Faculty of Engineering has done with its first year students for some time - the 'Global Engineering Challenge' - so that all students in all Faculties have the opportunity to do a collaborative project at some point in their first year. It has been a long road since then, but this afternoon we came to the almost-closing stage of the delivery of such a project for first year Social Sciences students. And because I wanted to be involved in the thing that I took a lead in taking through Senate, University Council, the Careers Advisory Board and so on, I have spent quite a few hours this week working in the project team. (I said 'almost-closing stage' because we now need to evaluate how it all went to learn lessons for next year - and dealing with nearly 2000 students has been a big task.)
What a week it has been - and especially today! I have been involved in a group of 4 working with students on a project entitled 'Sheffield: City of Immigration'. I have technically been the 'Academic Lead' with two research students as 'Facilitators'. I also brought my Executive Assistant into the team - she has been acting as secretary to the University-wide steering group and has become a real enthusiast for the whole thing, so it was only right that she took part in its delivery. Actually we effectively got rid of role titles in our 'gang of four' and just worked collaboratively together.
Our student groups (totaling over 50 students in 8 sub-groups) had worked so hard during the week that we decided to treat this morning's presentation session as a mini-conference, complete with tea, coffee, biscuits and pastries provided. And what a morning it turned out to be.
Here were eight groups presenting material that they had no idea about at the start of the week, using techniques that they had learned in the last couple of days - and creating videos, posters and Powerpoint presentations that would stand up against the best I have seen at academic conferences - indeed, better than many. These first year students, only 4 months or so into their university careers, had been organizing a project and allotting individual tasks within it: working out a timeline for their activities; undertaking a variety of different research methods to gather information, observations and other evidence on a question that they themselves had thought up; attending talks and other sessions to give them wider insights into their topic; getting training in a variety of skills such as photography, video production, and poster design; engaging with a series of real world issues in the city that will be their home for 3 or more years; producing a high quality means of communicating their findings - and not least, getting on with each other from a variety of different backgrounds from all round the world. What a fantastic set of achievements.
I have met the groups every day since Monday. And that has given me the joy that all teachers get from seeing our students develop in knowledge, skills and confidence. The intensity of a week devoted to this one project has made that process incredibly fast. Where on Monday I had anxieties about how some groups would get on, or whether they had a good enough question to work on, by today they had all come to the point of making an academically sound and technically competent contribution on our theme of Sheffield's immigration history and its migrant communities. It has been a very gratifying week. But like all good teaching experiences, in my view, it hasn't been about us teaching the students - instead it's been about us facilitating their learning by setting out the ways they could do it for themselves.
The icing on the cake? Although none of the groups I was involved in working with won one of the judges' prizes, one of them carried off the 'audience' prize - in other words, the prize where all those who looked at the exhibits voted on which was the best. Out of over 140 groups that's pretty good.
Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHKyIgR7QF8
What a week it has been - and especially today! I have been involved in a group of 4 working with students on a project entitled 'Sheffield: City of Immigration'. I have technically been the 'Academic Lead' with two research students as 'Facilitators'. I also brought my Executive Assistant into the team - she has been acting as secretary to the University-wide steering group and has become a real enthusiast for the whole thing, so it was only right that she took part in its delivery. Actually we effectively got rid of role titles in our 'gang of four' and just worked collaboratively together.
Our student groups (totaling over 50 students in 8 sub-groups) had worked so hard during the week that we decided to treat this morning's presentation session as a mini-conference, complete with tea, coffee, biscuits and pastries provided. And what a morning it turned out to be.
Here were eight groups presenting material that they had no idea about at the start of the week, using techniques that they had learned in the last couple of days - and creating videos, posters and Powerpoint presentations that would stand up against the best I have seen at academic conferences - indeed, better than many. These first year students, only 4 months or so into their university careers, had been organizing a project and allotting individual tasks within it: working out a timeline for their activities; undertaking a variety of different research methods to gather information, observations and other evidence on a question that they themselves had thought up; attending talks and other sessions to give them wider insights into their topic; getting training in a variety of skills such as photography, video production, and poster design; engaging with a series of real world issues in the city that will be their home for 3 or more years; producing a high quality means of communicating their findings - and not least, getting on with each other from a variety of different backgrounds from all round the world. What a fantastic set of achievements.
I have met the groups every day since Monday. And that has given me the joy that all teachers get from seeing our students develop in knowledge, skills and confidence. The intensity of a week devoted to this one project has made that process incredibly fast. Where on Monday I had anxieties about how some groups would get on, or whether they had a good enough question to work on, by today they had all come to the point of making an academically sound and technically competent contribution on our theme of Sheffield's immigration history and its migrant communities. It has been a very gratifying week. But like all good teaching experiences, in my view, it hasn't been about us teaching the students - instead it's been about us facilitating their learning by setting out the ways they could do it for themselves.
The icing on the cake? Although none of the groups I was involved in working with won one of the judges' prizes, one of them carried off the 'audience' prize - in other words, the prize where all those who looked at the exhibits voted on which was the best. Out of over 140 groups that's pretty good.
Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHKyIgR7QF8
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