We are in the last week of the project now, Lucian finished 2 weeks ago and I am continuing with the project which mainly involves pulling together all of the work we have done over the summer so that these projects can run smoothly through this coming academic year.
We have finished scoping projects now and so no further meetings were necessary last week or this week. As well as scoping the projects we have also had to find academics to supervise all of the projects and draw up an agreement document between the students and community partners. My main concern at the moment is the fact that we do not have supervisors for all the projects yet, and without a supervisor the project cannot run. As I finish at the end of this week, we had a meeting yesterday to discuss what stage the project was at, so any outstanding work needing to be done could be handed over to others who are continuing to work on the project.
At the beginning of the project our aim was to scope around three third year research projects, but we have actually managed to scope six third year research projects and five fourth year design projects as well as having contacts and project ideas for five potential future projects. So all in all the work we have been doing over the summer has been a great success. Furthermore we have passed on ideas for projects to both the mechanical engineering and engineering design departments at the university.
It will be interesting to see if these projects are successful in their development throughout the year, and whether it is easy for them to continue to run in future years, and spread across other departments. Personally I am very attracted to the community based learning projects as they are an exciting new opportunity which present the chance to gain new skills that might not be gained from lab or desk-based projects.
