Since spring 2006 the Mechanical engineering programme has used group dynamics as an integrated compulsory part of the first three years in the five-year programme at Chalmers. It has been an integrated part in the annual one semester project every year of the programme.
The spirit has been that the same group of teachers should be conducing the group dynamics teaching each year and monitoring the progression of the student skills of handling different types of issues that occur during the work in these three one-semester projects in the programme. The setting for the projects has been slightly different for each year of the programme both in the context, the selection of member as well as the size of the groups.
The supervisors have also been working in a different context both in complexity and number of parallel projects supervised. The third year project (thesis work) also has an extra tensing issue, to grade each student in the group on individual efforts made in the project work.
This report will not only reflect on students’ and supervisors’ views of group dynamics, but also include reflections from the teaching group and the programme team.
8th International CDIO Conference 2012, July 1-4, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia