Paper presented at the Annual Sheffield Learning & Teaching Conference 2018

1. Co-Designing the Programme-Level
Approach: Students in the
Community of Practice
Courtney Algar, Final year BEng student, Director of External Partnerships for iForge
George Charnley, Graduate MEng Aerospace Engineering (2017)
Dr Beverley Gibbs, Department of Mechanical Engineering (@bevgibbs)
Kareem Lewis, Graduate MEng Aerospace Engineering (2017)
Dr Peter Mylon, Department of Multidisciplinary Engineering
Dr Gary C Wood, University of Sheffield Enterprise / Faculty of Engineering (@GC_Wood)

2. Introduction & Context
● A degree programme is about building an integrated mastery of knowledge
● Students need space and structure in their university experience to integrate
knowledge and make sense of their learning
● Focus on PLA allows us to consider integration and sense-making within
and beyond curricula
● We can’t sense-make for students, so need to work with them to create the
right environment for them to do it
● We wanted to work with students collaboratively but had very few tools to do
that, so we are uncovering ways of doing it as we are going along.
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3. Emerging themes in our approach
● Value of moving beyond “involvement”
● Crucial role of professional services – challenging assumptions, moving
barriers out of the way, coaching, translation/understanding different
stakeholders, drawing the community of practice together
● Value and strength in PLA and wider student learning experience.
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4. 4
MEC307 Group Design Project

5. MEC307 Group Design Project: What is it?
● Mechanical engineering students are challenged in groups to provide
solutions to a variety of engineering industrial problems
● Each project is proposed and supported by a stakeholder, some of whom
are internal (research) and others external (industry)
● Last year we included two laboratory teaching design projects from
Multidisciplinary Engineering Education in The Diamond
○ A ‘dynamic’ first Dynamics lab
○ Forced convective heat transfer
● The academics who teach the labs functioned as the industrial partners
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6. MEC307: How did it work?
● Students were assigned projects and given briefs – learning outcomes,
scale of manufacture, budget, safety
● They had an initial meeting with the lab academic to discuss requirements
before developing ideas
● They met with both academic mentors and stakeholders over the semester
to keep on track
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7. 7

8. MEC307: What was the outcome?
Dynamics experiment
● They conducted surveys of first-year students to gather ideas
● At the end they produced a prototype and presented it at an expo to staff
and students; it is now being developed further by technical staff
Heat transfer experiment
● Got bogged down in computation rather than practical experiment design
Why?
● Dynamics project was more open-ended, while the heat transfer one was
tightly specified
● Students can sometimes be reluctant to get hands-on – fear of failure, lack
of design tools and experience?
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9. MEC307 Group Design Project: Why?
● Engaging students in designing student experiences keeps them relevant
and produces more ideas
○ Students came up with a much better, more fun and more versatile
experiment than years of academic input had produced
● Although the dynamics experiment needs further academic and technical
input before being ready to roll out, the fact that it was designed by students
is a real selling point, both in engaging students in the experiment and in
recruitment (e.g. open day demonstrations)
● Students learned about the effort that goes into teaching design, and staff
also learned about what makes students tick
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10. New Level 7 cross-Faculty module
designed by returning Year in
Industry students
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11. The Story
● Students returning from Year in Industry (YINI) placements find re-
integration to studying/University learning challenging
● MEng focus group for YINI students to understand this in depth
● Provided insight into challenges of both content, structure and environment
● George & Kareem particularly keen to follow up
● Module design workshop with outline brief and no constraints:
○ What design considerations did they make and why?
○ What would be useful as a module for YINI returners?
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12. The Process
● How did we go about it?
○ Created an affinity map (SWOT
analysis) based largely off the transcript
of the focus group
○ Conceptualised actionable strategies
answering points raised by students
○ Employed Agile project management
learnt in industry
○ Constructed the framework of the
module
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13. The Result
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● What value has it created?
○ Leveraging skills, networks
and knowledge
○ Involving academic staff
○ Empowerment through
ownership, independence and
involvement
● How was the experience?

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15. iForge: What is it?
● A new student-run makerspace in The Diamond
● Makerspaces are “facilities and cultures that afford unstructured student-
centric environments for design, invention, and prototyping”1
● The Diamond was providing structured teaching in manufacturing but was
not able to support much co-curricular activity and creative freedom
● The iForge was a product of demand from students, inspiration from
makerspaces in the US, and serendipitous meetings with enthusiastic
students
● It provides 24 hour access to workshop equipment, 3D printers, laser cutters
etc. for students to work on Uni or home projects, business ideas etc.
1. Forest, C., Farzaneh, H.H., Weinmann, J., Lindemann, U. (2016). Quantitative survey and analysis of five maker spaces at large, research-oriented universities. In: 123rd ASEE Annual Conference and
Exposition. New Orleans, LA: ASEE.
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16. ● Initial team of 7 students, plus academic and technicians
● The team worked together to:
○ Identify and design a space
○ Bring in funding and industrial partnership
○ Specify equipment and create a materials usage policy
○ Recruit a larger student team from across the Faculty
○ Created a structure for training and supervising students etc.
○ Publicise the iForge and put on events to attract and educate students
○ Create IT and maintenance systems to improve functionality
○ Create a culture and a sense of ownership with all users
iForge: How was it set up?
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17. iForge: Benefits to students
● Run like a start-up
● Place for sharing and collaborating on ideas
○ (Student-Student)
○ (Student-Staff)
● Platform to access resources within University
● Teach and gain skills in non-conventional ways
● Fun!
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18. iForge: Why involve students?
● Student ownership of the project
● To create something that appeals to students
● To give students broad experience of leadership
● To increase capacity without increasing staff workload
● Had almost 1000 visits from nearly 500 students in 2 months
Unforeseen benefits:
● Students were much better at building industrial partnerships
● Students have better technical knowledge in some areas e.g. 3D printing, IT
systems
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19. Discussion Prompts
● What is your community of practice? Is it working? Is it enough?
● How are students currently involved in your programme development? Is
this enough?
● What concerns or worries do you have about this kind of collaboration?
● What value would these kinds of activities have in your curriculum?
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20. Final Thoughts: Key Learning Points
● Build the right team
● Collaboration is not the same as representation
● Students with a range of experiences can make the best contribution
● Academic staff have to genuinely care what students think and trust them
● Develop people so they can recognise barriers, and provide support to
overcome them
● ‘Naivety’ can be powerful in finding innovative solutions
● If it doesn’t scare you a bit, are you being radical enough?
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21. Co-Designing the Programme-Level
Approach: Students in the
Community of Practice
Courtney Algar, Final year MEng student, Director of External Partnerships for iForge
George Charnley, Graduate MEng Aerospace Engineering 2017)
Dr Beverley Gibbs, Department of Mechanical Engineering (@bevgibbs)
Kareem Lewis, Graduate MEng Aerospace Engineering (2017)
Dr Peter Mylon, Department of Multidisciplinary Engineering
Dr Gary C Wood, University of Sheffield Enterprise / Faculty of Engineering (@GC_Wood)