Creating innovative engineering
An example of a subject with an industry-linked group task that necessitates comprehensive, purposeful interaction between the students over the course of the semester.
Context
- Faculty/School: Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
- Number of students: 150-180 per semester
- Year level: Graduate
- Curricular/or co-curricular: Curricular
Description
Creating Innovative Engineering (CIE) and its companion subject, Creating Innovative Professionals ENGR90039 (CIP), are delivered by the University's Innovation Practice Program. These are Masters-level subjects in which interdisciplinary student teams, assisted by a mentor, propose an innovation concept in response to a challenge posed by a sponsor, generally an industry partner. In these subjects, students gain both practical experience in, and personal and theoretical insights into the conceptual design process, working with others, and about themselves. The subject is intense, challenging, experiential and requires significant self-direction.
How does this program support IoC aims?
The primary task is a group task, necessitating comprehensive, purposeful interaction between the students over the course of the semester. That task is part of an industry-aligned and professionally relevant experience, through which groups are mentored by an industry professional. The subject also includes explicit discussion of intercultural topics, such as by lecture material on subjective perception, getting students to score themselves and discuss differences using a culture assessment framework, and teaching them how to interview people who might think differently from themselves.
What have students said about this program?
Students write a 750-word personal reflection analysing their behaviour in the context of an aspect of the course in eight of the 12 weeks, and they write a response to a peer’s reflection in seven of those. The reflections create a venue in which students can give voice to aspects of difference they would not normally raise or would not normally take the time to articulate carefully. The peer responses expose students to thinking and perspectives they may not have considered otherwise (as respondent or reader of the response). In the culture week, a large portion of students write about an aspect of cultural difference that resonated with them. In subsequent weeks, and in their responses to each other’s reflections, they often pick up these themes. The insights are many and varied, but they all demonstrate that the students have engaged with and applied the concepts.
Considerations for implementation
The approach to this class is comprehensive and is designed as a learning system. Many components are needed in order to make this subject (and the requisite group project) work well:
- Students are given frameworks for how to work together, including for understanding diversity
- Students are given language for talking about how to work together
- The learning environment is designed in a way that makes working together necessary (i.e., it precludes the “divide and conquer” strategy students often use)
- A learning process is provided that is structured and explicit, which helps students to communicate
- An open-emotional learning space is created, facilitated by a mentor who is trained to create a safe psychological space in which the students can grow.
Regular self-reflection is also a purposefully incorporated element, prompting students to explicitly consider the process of working together, not just the product. Students also respond to each other’s reflections (non-anonymously), prompting frequent dialogue and helping to facilitate regular interaction.