Large team projects – An alternative type of master project?
Year: 2010
Editor: Boks W; Ion, W; McMahon, C and Parkinson B
Author: Aasland, Knut Einar
Section: COURSE EVALUATION
Page(s): 90-95
Abstract
Whereas our study program has been fundamentally revised over the last 10 to 15 years, the master project is very much as it always has been: A project more aimed at showing what has been learned during the preceding study than at learning. This is at odds with the steadily increasing demands from industry for candidates that can go directly into productive work after they are hired. In an effort to increase the learning and “produce” candidates better suited to industrial demands, we have developed a new kind of master project as an experiment. In this, a large, multi-curricular team of students do a realistic project from start to finish. The focus is on realistic problem solving, on cross-disciplinary learning, on working within fixed deadlines and on getting the necessary resources for the project. To a certain degree evaluation is sacrificed for learning. The first results are in, and we need to evaluate them and find out if this is a type of master project we would like to see more widespread use of.
Keywords: Project based learning, cross-disciplinary teams, learning content