This month Engineering Knowledge Club is one year old. Last year, UCL and Think Up launched EKC with the aim of inspiring undergraduate engineers to develop their own engineering general knowledge. In the Autumn of 2013 a group of undergraduate engineers got together to identify engineering topics that they would like to know more about, and what they could do to build their knowledge about these topics. The deal was this: if the students could come up with their own set of activities to meet their learning aims, the UCL and Think Up team would do what it could to support that learning.
During the year, two students took up the challenge. Matthew decided that he wanted to learn more about architectural design styles and Friba Housseini chose to develop her understanding of tunnelling methods on Crossrail. Members of Engineering Knowledge Club are asked to write on this blog about what they are learning (click through previous entries on this blog to see what Matthew and Friba have written). The year of activity culminated in a Crossrail site visit organised by Think Up in support of Friba’s chosen topic.
While the take up in the first year has been small, it was sufficient to demonstrate how the concept could work, and gave us a clear idea of how the activities of the club needed to be organised in order to keep students motivated. The positive learning experiences of these two individuals have been sufficient for us to decide to run Engineering Knowledge Club for another year at UCL. In recognition of Friba’s active engagement with the initiative, the Think Up team have appointed Friba President of Engineering Knowledge Club at UCL for the academic year 2014-2015.
Very shortly, the date of the first Engineering Knowledge Club of this academic year will be posted to this blog, so watch this space. If you are interested in getting involved then please post a comment on this blog entry.
