Team project work for distance learners in engineering - challenges and benefits

This paper was presented at the 2008 Engineering Conference - Innovation Good Practice and Research in Engineering Education.

Team Engineering (first presented in Autumn 2006) was the first course (module) at the Open University (OU) to use wikis and videoconferencing in combination to support the work of project teams. Teams of five students working remotely from one another tackle an engineering project over thirty-two weeks.

Feedback from tutors and students alike has been extremely positive whilst recognising the limitations of the technologies in their current implementations. This paper gives an account of the students’ achievements and offers an assessment of the pedagogical potential of using these media together.