Creation of a collaborative study community in engineering studies

This paper describes a novel course structure in the beginning of engineering studies. The aim of the course was to integrate new students into the study community by keeping them tightly together in one classroom during the first eight weeks of study. The idea was based on project based learning that had already been introduced in many universities. However, the course did not revolve around one single project, but consisted of several small team assignments. The paper is a case study that describes the course and its findings, comparing the situation with previous years’ experiences that have been documented in several earlier studies. Feedback and notes were collected regularly during the course. Student surveys after the course indicated a high student satisfaction.

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