A split group format

One of my fellow PIDPers made a digital project illustrating the values of group based learning.

I had a large challenge in deciding how I was going to organize the format of my 4th level course.  They biggest challenge i had was the allocation of materials and shop equipment.  As a class of 16 a lot of the 4th year projects require having enough equipment to teach and get everyone involve in the same subject at the same time.  Due to budget and space constraints in our shop it isnt possible to teach 16 students one subject.  the default method had been to "talk about the projects and make the curriculum purely theoretical.  I felt as though this was a gigantic waste of an opportunity to introduce and explore some of the most detailed and technical aspects of our trade.

So the big question and something I say to my students..."OK you have identified a problem, is this a complaint or do you have a solution"

Here is what I did

I split the class of 16 into 3 groups, 5, 5, and 6.  For each week they were assigned one of three topics.  air compressors, pneumatic circuits and maintenance systems.

I prepared a schedule with detailed times and activities for the groups to work through from Monday to Wednesday. I took the time on Monday to explain the schedule and what was expected.

The result was amazing.  the students really surprised me in how they rose to the challenges I put in from of them.  truly, i did not make things easy.  What I noticed was the more difficult the challenge the more engaged the group was.  

This group arrangement allowed me to give each student an opportunity to work disassembling and re-assembling two major classifications of compressors, working through and buiding 10 separate pneumatic circuits on our trainer boards, and finally, the most valuable activity was to get our students to work with our vibration analysis equipment.  Many millwrights will work their entire career and not fully understand or touch a predictive maintenance device. My students worked with a 30,000$ instrument on a 65000$ IRD dynamic balancer.  Here is a short clip of the engagement experienced by the students.

Over all this has been a huge amount of work but the benefits of seeing students excited and happy in the shop is worth every ounce of effort.  This is definitely a strategy I would like to make work on a regular basis.  I still have alot of work to do to make it better, but its a step in the right direction. So I leave you with what my students have been up to. Enjoy