Brief description

In small groups, students engaged with an authentic and complex problem, relating to the manufacture of a novel biotherapeutic, throughout the module. There was no singular “correct” solution and the problem was too large, complex and changing to be tackled by a single student.

How does this align to the Curriculum Shaper(s)?

The students worked as project teams, within a fictitious company, and shared their learning weekly. Student learning, and teaching, were captured in weekly reflective blogs and other critical thinking and writing exercises. Student celebrated their learning in a show-and-tell session at the end of the semester.

Future directions

With some organisation, this student as creator approach to teaching, where the student is centralised in the learning (and teaching) process has the potential to be integrated both horizontally (i.e. across the modules in any one year of a programme) or vertically (i.e. through the years of a programme).

One piece of advice

Initially, students can struggle with the open-endedness and scale of the problem. Scaffolding and chunking the overarching problem into smaller ‘mini’ problems can help students to engage; it is worthwhile to ensure a tangible output is the focus of each scaffolded activity. Each activity brings the student groups closer to their solution to the problem, however, the final output will only come to fruition if the group works together.