Inter-Year Teamwork Formats Examined through Student Experience
Year: 2012
Editor: Lyndon Buck, Geert Frateur, William Ion, Chris McMahon, Chris Baelus, Guido De Grande, Stijn Verwulgen
Author: Green (1, Clare Ruth
Series: E&PDE
Institution: 1: Institut Superieur de Design, Valenciennes, France; 2: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
Section: Scientific Methods for Course Evaluation
Page(s): 355-360
ISBN: 978-1-904670-36-0
Abstract
This paper presents inter-year teamwork formats used in the general context of experiential problem-based learning in product design teaching at university level. The aim is to better understand the mechanisms that affect the success of inter-year teamwork among design students by looking at the student experience of team-working. A survey of 5th year product design students relating their experiences of two major inter-year group projects in their 3rd year of study highlights a number of key points. Subjects highlighted by these student written accounts are explored with reference to current academic research on team working. We introduce the notion of student feedback "at a distance" which may be a useful tool in helping to identify action areas in pedagogy without the evident drawbacks of short-term evaluation. Our findings give insights on small heterogeneous student teams and mostly confirm the advantages of inter-year team projects, providing useful building blocks for improving design students capacity to work in future complex collaborative environments.
Keywords: Inter-year teamwork, student feedback, project-based learning, self managed teams