Initial Suggestions for Supervising and Mentoring Undergraduate Student Projects
Evaluation & Assessment of the Undergraduate Project Workshop - 2013
Initial Suggestions for Supervising and Mentoring Undergraduate Student Projects
Nasser M. Sabah∗
Engineering Profession Department, Palestine Technical College, Deir El-balah City, Gaza Strip, Palestine
ABSTRACT Project work is scheduled in the final year study of undergraduate students in computer system engineering and other relevant programs. The final project provides students the opportunity to integrate all the skills and knowledge learnt from previous studies into real practice. This paper presents the practical supervision in guiding students throughout the project development. Based on the experience of student projects supervision, peer interaction, teamwork environment and decision making are the most factors that affect the quality of student projects. It is more efficient to adopt multiple formal and informal communication channels between supervisor and students alongside the traditional methods. Peer interaction is one of the key elements that support deep learning; it creates more competitive working environment and has a positive effect on individual student motivation. Furthermore, one of the most influential factors that affect the quality of student projects is the student’s ability to work collaboratively in a teamwork environment. When an extreme circumstance occurs, the supervisor only advices students on all possible solutions and the corresponding consequences. Students decide on which action to take in resolving the encountered problem. This gives students more responsibility to overcome the encountered problems during the research project effectively and able students to retain individual responsibility for each successive task of data collection, analysis and evaluation. KEY WORDS: Undergraduate project; effective project supervision; project team management; research process; teamwork environment
1. INTRODUCTION Graduation project in the undergraduate study is
Initial Suggestions for Supervising and Mentoring Undergraduate Student Projects
Nasser M. Sabah∗
Engineering Profession Department, Palestine Technical College, Deir El-balah City, Gaza Strip, Palestine
ABSTRACT Project work is scheduled in the final year study of undergraduate students in computer system engineering and other relevant programs. The final project provides students the opportunity to integrate all the skills and knowledge learnt from previous studies into real practice. This paper presents the practical supervision in guiding students throughout the project development. Based on the experience of student projects supervision, peer interaction, teamwork environment and decision making are the most factors that affect the quality of student projects. It is more efficient to adopt multiple formal and informal communication channels between supervisor and students alongside the traditional methods. Peer interaction is one of the key elements that support deep learning; it creates more competitive working environment and has a positive effect on individual student motivation. Furthermore, one of the most influential factors that affect the quality of student projects is the student’s ability to work collaboratively in a teamwork environment. When an extreme circumstance occurs, the supervisor only advices students on all possible solutions and the corresponding consequences. Students decide on which action to take in resolving the encountered problem. This gives students more responsibility to overcome the encountered problems during the research project effectively and able students to retain individual responsibility for each successive task of data collection, analysis and evaluation. KEY WORDS: Undergraduate project; effective project supervision; project team management; research process; teamwork environment
1. INTRODUCTION Graduation project in the undergraduate study is
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