The Office – Timber Engineering 4 [CENGM0053]
The Practice
There are many examples of engineering students learning in authentic environments, such as lab sessions and field work, but a place rarely replicated as a learning environment is the office. Such thinking, coupled with a desire to encourage students to directly input what they are learning into what they are doing, led to the creation of ‘The Office’. Designed and delivered by Dr James Norman, this authentic learning example was part of Timber Engineering 4 – a final year unit in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (CAME).
Over 10 weeks, 40 students worked on four authentic group projects for a fictional engineering practice, ‘Just Timber’. There were no lectures – instead, students were set pre-reading and videos on design process basics before being presented with a real brief in a real-world context. The brief outlined client requirements, the information available, and outputs needed, with builds located in actual environments and industrial representatives acting as real-world clients. The first three projects were designed to teach the ‘employees’ all they needed on the subject matter; the final project assessed their learning.
The learning space was designed to look and feel like an office. Just Timber had its own logo, with branded pens, mugs, and notepads. A flatbed teaching room was the office space, with desks rearranged and inspirational pictures on the walls. There was a breakout area, a tea point and an entrance, with a company logo on the door. Students ‘worked’ a 9 to 5 day, required to be present for core hours but able to do things (e.g. lectures and supervisor meetings) outside of these if necessary. External speakers were invited to give lunchtime technical talks, as is common in real world engineering practises.
The Impact
Observations from Dr Norman on the experience of teaching the unit: – – – – –
Attendance was excellent and better than any previous unit, with very few instances of students arriving late or not attending (due to illness or other commitments).
The re-imagined teaching space worked well. Whilst students did ask for more desk space, the changes made helped transform the environment into a buzzing office.
Dr Norman selected teams for the group projects work, so students were in groups with peers they may not know. Unlike previous years, there were no complaints about teams.
The Office sounded like a real professional office – i.e. the busy, bustling sound of collaboration. This was markedly different to the lecture environment.
The speakers invited to give lunchtime technical talks covered a wide selection of timber engineering topics. These were well attended and well received by the students.
Assessment
Students were marked on their final project to design a theatre, which was integrated throughout the unit (launched in week 2 and running until the end of week 10). The other projects were designed to both teach students and give them the skills to complete this final, overarching project.
Next Steps
The Timber Engineering 4 unit was discontinued after the 2019/20 academic year as part of a school wide unit simplification process. Dr Norman plans to bring some of the concepts of The Office to
teaching in academic year 2021/22.
A consideration would be ensuring a diverse range of guest speakers who provide a fair representation of the cohort – e.g. inviting more female speakers.
Contact
- Dr James Norman, Associate Professor of Sustainable Design and CAME School Education
Director (james.norman@bristol.ac.uk). - Francis Peppett, Faculty Employability Adviser for Engineering and Computer Science
(francis.peppett@bristol.ac.uk).
Further information on The Office can be found on the Bristol Institute of Learning and Teaching
(BILT) website: https://bilt.online/the-office-episode-0-trailer/
Case study produced in July 2021.
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