A collaborative and experiential learning model powered by real-world projects

Information Technology (IT) curricula\u27s strong application component and its focus on user centeredness and team work require that students experience directly real-world projects for real users of IT solutions. Although the merit of this IT educational tenet is universally recognized, delivering collaborative and experiential learning has its challenges. Reaching out to identify projects formulated by actual organizations adds significantly to course preparation. There is a certain level of risk involved with delivering a useful solution while, at the same time, enough room should be allowed for students to experiment with, be wrong about, review, and learn. Challenges pertaining to the real-world aspect of problem-based learning are compounded by managing student teams and assessing their work such that both individual and collective contributions are taken into account. Finally, the quality of the project releases is not the only measure of student learning. Students should be given meaningful opportunities to practice, improve, and demonstrate their communication and interpersonal skills. In this paper we present our experience with two courses in which teams of students worked on real-world projects involving three external partners. We describe how each of the challenges listed above has impacted the course requirements, class instruction, team dynamics, assessment, and learning in these courses. Course assessment and survey data from students are linked to learning outcomes and point to areas where the collaborative and experiential learning model needs improvement

Design Factory New Zealand: A co-creation space where students work in multidisciplinary teams with industry partners to solve complex problems

This workshop provided an opportunity for participants to work with Design Factory New Zealand (DFNZ) principles to experience learning as a multidisciplinary team, working on a complex problem. Participants had a chance to see how DFNZ acts as a transformation agent within students, staff, institution and the wider community. DFNZ as a curriculum allows students to explore new themes that challenge the usual paradigms. We encourage students to take ownership of their learning, to be open minded, and to have the freedom to respond to solutions without the shackles of a traditional design process driven by cost. By partnering with industry and exposing students to create solutions for real world problems, DFNZ has the aim of producing global citizens who have a better chance of succeeding in the workplaces of the future. Currently DFNZ has facilitated learning to students from Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Communication, Information Technology, Business, Design and Sports Science. Industry partners working with the DFNZ team tap into a pool of carefully selected and motivated students who are supported to come up with innovative and holistic solutions to their problems. Industry can use DFNZ as an opportunity to solve specific and existing needs of the company, or utilise fresh thinking to approach complex and wider issues. Involvement with the Design Factory can provide industry with critical strategic insight

Centralisation of assessment: meeting the challenges of multi-year team projects in information systems education

This paper focuses on the difficulties of assessing multi-year team projects, in which a team of students drawn from all three years of a full-time degree course works on a problem with and for a real-life organization. Although potential solutions to the problem of assessing team projects may be context-dependent, we believe that discussing these in our paper will allow readers to relate to their teaching cases and increase the general appreciation of team project related work. Findings discussed in this paper are based on the first cycle of action research in relation to an existing multi-year team project scheme. Based on the interpretivist perspective, this work draws on data from staff and student focus groups, semi structured interviews and surveys. Team project clients were also asked to comment on their experiences and the way they would like team projects to be improved in the future. Since issues affecting the success of team projects are quite closely inter-related, a systemic view is adopted rather than analysis of a single issue in isolation. Overall there is a feeling that multi-year team projects are a good idea in theory but can be challenging to implement in practice. It is argued that the main areas of concern are the assessment process, the dilemmas and tensions that it can introduce, and the related inconsistencies in stakeholder involvement, which can compromise the learning experience if not handled well. We believe that the assessment process holds the key to a successful learning experience in team project work

Collaborative workshop: sustainable civil engineering proposals for real settings

The objective is to familiarize students with real civil engineering problems as posed by social agents (e.g. a city council, a neighbourhood association, etc.) and to foster social responsibility, active and cooperative learning, teamwork and sustainability. A multidisciplinary team accompanies students in finding solutions to problems affecting a region, with the goal of training them in how to sensitively deal with complex urban realities and understand the possible impacts and conflicts of their projects for their region and society. Methodologically, this training strategy is based on active teamwork and cooperation applied to a real case. It is also influenced by service learning in that local stakeholders explain their problems to the students and ask for solutions. This initiative is not part of any study plan but is a complementary teaching activity organized by the Civil Engineering School of Barcelona and worth 3 ECTS for participating students. In 2016-2017, the workshop —covering problems related to harbour design, water quality, pedestrian bridges and retaining walls— as conducted in Marina d’Empuriabrava on the Costa Brava, proving to be a very satisfactory experience for students, teachers and local stakeholders in terms of learning and proposals. In 2017-2018 the workshop has been held in El Vendrell (Tarragona). In the next, editions, it is planned to make ongoing improvements in terms of time organization and teamwork evaluation.Postprint (published version

Collaborative Learning and Critical Thinking: Use of the Jigsaw Learning Activity in Occupational Therapy Teaching

Collaborative team learning prepares future practitioners using well-crafted, guided collaborative learning activities. Collaborative learning distributes responsibility across team members as they engage socially to build knowledge and learner skills. Critical thinking is a learner skill that is fostered through challenging the team of learners’ assumptions through ill-defined, complex real-life cases that defy easy solutions. The ability of occupational therapists to create effective discharge plans has been found to positively alter hospital recidivism. By offering a Jigsaw Case focused on discharge planning at several points in time across the service delivery continuum of care, a team of learners engaged in collaborative learning. We offer a complete Jigsaw Case experience supported by the literature of best practice that faculty can use as an example to tailor their own case based on circumstances and contexts

Information technology team projects in higher education: an international viewpoint

It is common to find final or near final year undergraduate Information Technology students undertaking a substantial development project; a project where the students have the opportunity to be fully involved in the analysis, design, and development of an information technology service or product. This involvement has been catalyzed and prepared for during their previous studies where the students have been told and shown how to develop similar systems. It is the belief that only through this ‘real’ project do they get the chance to experience something similar to what is expected of them when they embark on their chosen profession; that is, as an information technology professional. The high value of ‘near real life’ educational experience is recognized by many universities across the globe. The aim of this paper is to present examples from three countries - Australia, United Kingdom and South Africa, of the delivery of these team, capstone or industrial experience projects; their curricula and management processes. Academics from institutions in each of the countries share experiences, challenges and pitfalls encountered during the delivery of these information technology projects within their institutions. An overview of each institution’s strategies is provided and highlights specific issues such as the selection of projects, allocation of teams to projects, legal requirements, assessment methods, challenges and benefits. The pedagogies presented here are not exhaustive; however, the three institutions do have in common the implementation of a combination of constructivism with a community of practice approach in delivering the project unit. The three universities recognize the need for industrial experience and learning of applied skills, and therefore make these projects a compulsory part of the curriculum. The projects tend to be real life business problems which are solved over a period of two semesters, and in the case of Cape Town it could be two consecutive years of two semesters each. These projects tend to involve practical development (for example databases and web sites). The process of project-to-team allocation is generally similar in all cases. Despite their differences, team work related problems are quite similar in all three cases presented, and seem to appear as a result of team work complexity, and the number of stakeholders involved. The intention of this paper is not to propose solutions to these problems (as these would be context dependent), but to draw the attention to the main problem categories for similar schemes, these are; • project selection, • management of students, • management of academic staff, • student team motivation, • equality and diversity, • passengers, and • assessment. Furthermore, it is not the intention of the authors to portray one approach as better than another, however, the approaches are representative of how team projects are being delivered across the globe, and in particular, in the contributing institutions. It is hoped that the assimilation and dissemination of information regarding the various approaches presented will nurture further discussion, and open communication across the globe with the view to enhancing the teaching and learning experience of such projects

Tutorial: Knowledge-infused Learning for Autonomous Driving (KL4AD)

Autonomous Driving (AD) is considered as a testbed for tackling many hard AI problems. Despite the recent advancements in the field, AD is still far from achieving full autonomy due to core technical problems inherent in AD. The emerging field of neuro-symbolic AI and the methods for knowledge-infused learning are showing exciting ways of leveraging external knowledge within machine/deep learning solutions, with the potential benefits for interpretability, explainability, robustness, and transferability. In this tutorial, we will examine the use of knowledge-infused learning for three core state-of-the-art technical achievements within the AD domain. With a collaborative team from both academia and industry, we will demonstrate recent innovations using real-world datasets

Systems Analysis and Design Application: Future Vehicle Prototyping

This nifty assignment research is presented in an undergraduate level course on Systems Analysis and Design to provide additional student engagement in the context of an applied team problem solving exercise to prototype a future vehicle. Systems Analysis and Design (SAND) is the process of identifying business opportunities or problems, analyzing the business opportunity, developing solutions to address the opportunity, and finally implementing the solution. This project provides the following contributions: 1.) An experiential learning activity provides students the opportunity to apply the learning classroom content to a real-world scenario, and 2.) The experiential learning method engages students to apply their current knowledge and reflect on the scenario to build upon their knowledge. The Learning Objectives include: 1.) Practice and perform prototyping, 2.) Apply the agile approach, and 3.) Utilize underlying analyst competencies

A Reinforcement Learning-assisted Genetic Programming Algorithm for Team Formation Problem Considering Person-Job Matching

An efficient team is essential for the company to successfully complete new projects. To solve the team formation problem considering person-job matching (TFP-PJM), a 0-1 integer programming model is constructed, which considers both person-job matching and team members' willingness to communicate on team efficiency, with the person-job matching score calculated using intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. Then, a reinforcement learning-assisted genetic programming algorithm (RL-GP) is proposed to enhance the quality of solutions. The RL-GP adopts the ensemble population strategies. Before the population evolution at each generation, the agent selects one from four population search modes according to the information obtained, thus realizing a sound balance of exploration and exploitation. In addition, surrogate models are used in the algorithm to evaluate the formation plans generated by individuals, which speeds up the algorithm learning process. Afterward, a series of comparison experiments are conducted to verify the overall performance of RL-GP and the effectiveness of the improved strategies within the algorithm. The hyper-heuristic rules obtained through efficient learning can be utilized as decision-making aids when forming project teams. This study reveals the advantages of reinforcement learning methods, ensemble strategies, and the surrogate model applied to the GP framework. The diversity and intelligent selection of search patterns along with fast adaptation evaluation, are distinct features that enable RL-GP to be deployed in real-world enterprise environments.Comment: 16 page