(262f) When Students Develop e-Learning Material for Their Peers

The Department of Chemical Engineering have long had a desire to develop e-learning material for their undergraduate modules. Unfortunately, given our very high student/staff ratio, there is never enough time to do this properly. With funding from the Faculty, an ExxonMobil teaching award and industry, ten undergraduate students were hired for eight weeks during the Summer 2013 and Summer 2014 to develop e-learning material based on Moodle for most of the department's first year modules. The posts were advertised to all undergraduates and students applied by submitting a one page application detailing what they wanted to develop, and why they were right for the job. The selected students were mainly from Year 2, but there were also a few Year 1 students and one and two Year 3 students, repectively, in 2013 and 2014.

The experience far surpassed the expectations. The students, who only knew each other vaguely beforehand, came together as a team from Day 1. The Year 3 students assumed a clear leadership position and led the team brilliantly. The material the teams developed was imaginative, comprehensive, technically sound, and with just the right dash of humour. The material was much better than what a member of academic staff would have developed, in particular, in terms of the feedback included for multiple choice questions etc. The students also developed videos to support some of the learning.

The poster will show examples of all the material produced, and will discuss the experience of letting students take the lead in developing e-learning material for their friends.