Abstract
This account is mostly written by students in the first year of their discipline-based study of civil engineering. It features their self-managed development of graduate abilities in the second semester of an undergraduate Irish course in problem-based civil engineering. The principal abilities were creativity, problem-solving, presentations and teamwork. The case-study paper concentrates upon four students’ reports and reflections on their experiences concerning their second (partially locked-down) semester. Their accounts complement the review of the early weeks of their first semester experience, that has already been published elsewhere. They are joined by the tutor who was an external facilitator of their early drafts of reviews. He suggested the compilation and structure of this paper, and has assisted with the assembly of the condensed individual contributions.
Highlights
The degree program for the four student writers began in 2018-9 as Common Entry Engineering
They completed this year together with approximately 200 other students. The aim of this programme was to ensure that all students had the same basic skills, and some knowledge of the different engineering degree choices on offer - Mechanical, Biomedical, Design and Manufacturing, and Civil. Those who chose Civil Engineering really only began their specialised programme in the following September
They soon found, as one described, that “Civil Engineering lecturers are a tight-knit bunch who really pushed for us to develop skills beyond the kind you could learn from a textbook.”
Summary
The degree program for the four student writers began in 2018-9 as Common Entry Engineering. They later learned that he had been impressed by what he had read, and had compiled a composite account of the class experience, using unedited first-hand excerpts from twelve individual claims He asked and readily received these writers’ permission to submit this to the journal Reflective Practice (Cowan, 2020). When the class of 2019-20 progressed into their second semester, four of the original writers were contacted by this tutor He had been invited by the editor of the present journal to follow up the account in Reflective Practice. He felt that, once again, an account of the experience of engaging in further self-managed development of abilities should be written mainly by students in their own words. Semester 2 Continued at First as a Natural Progression – Came Lockdown! (Ellen Doorly)
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