Interactive session - synergy: can university and college students share a learning experience?

In industrial practice, engineers and engineering technologists often collaborate on solving problems. Yet, this collaboration rarely occurs in an educational setting. Queen's University and Fleming College have programs where students work in teams to solve real-world problem for clients. During the 2002-03 academic year, a project team consisting of engineering students from Queen's University and engineering technology students from Fleming College worked together to solve an industrial problem for a fee-paying client. Using the experience of this case study and that of participants, this interactive session develops a framework of the possibilities, pitfalls and prospects of implementing shared university and college student learning experiences. The participants discussed and explore how to choose appropriate consulting projects, how to establish expectations which encourage synergy, how diverse students can work together to achieve learning outcomes appropriate to their professions or disciplines, how to manage crises, inter-personal relationships, and satisfy administrative needs.