IMAGE - students' leadership in a project development

• Type: Article in International Conference Proceedings Book
• Date: 2006

Authors

Mário Oliveira (Author) FEUP; Daniel Mendes (Author) Other; Bernardo Almada Lobo (Author) FEUP; Barbedo Magalhães (Author) FEUP

Conference proceedings International

Title: SEFI 2006 - 34th Annual Conference: Engineering Education and Active Students

Pages: 1-8

34th SEFI Annual Conference: Engineering Education and Active Students

28 June 2006 through 1 July 2006

Indexing

Scopus - 0 Citations

Scientific classification

CORDIS: Social sciences > Educational sciences

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00G-FDV

Abstract (EN): Several discussions concerning the improvement of engineering students' learning process take place. The use of Active Learning tools is grabbing the attention of the pedagogical community as an answer to the recent education process requirements for the new century. A debut-mother project named PESC (To Project, To Undertake, To Know How to Achieve) aimed to fulfil these needs by involving students in a hands-on experience. Within this framework, the development of an industrial engineering and management game (IMAGE) was conducted. PESC initiative shows some similarities with CDIO (Conceiving-Designing-Implementing-Operating). However, the authors consider that this framework needs to be improved addressing other important attributes such as the capacity of identifying, evaluating and formulating problems beforehand. The argument is that PESC fulfils these requirements, based on the creation of multidisciplinary working teams under the students' leadership. Work organization and control were vital to the accomplishment of the proposed task. The project key success factors were the establishment of a direct communication and of ambitious assignments that would challenge the whole group. Moreover, detailed task scheduling, weekly meetings and weekly progress reports were implemented by the leaders. These steps induced team work, dynamism, competition and responsibility on the students, enabling the fulfilment of the ambitious deadlines.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific