At DTU Civil Engineering, the number of project students following BEng, BSc and MSc study programmes has risen to 300–400 per year. Many of the students want to work on innovative projects, where they can contribute to the research and to developing new solutions. This method demands a lot of resources, however, so DTU Civil Engineering has developed the ‘project families’ concept, where students can either focus on different—but related—subsidiary issues, or attack the same problem from different angles. The approach has generated a good deal of interesting experience for the department.
“One of the main advantages of the ‘project families’ concept is that it helps students reach farther, try more approaches and become more professional in their reporting,” explains Per Goltermann, Deputy Head of Department and Head of Studies at DTU Civil Engineering.
“In addition, it helps improve presentation of their projects and leads them to results that can more readily be used in their supervisors’ research and industrial innovation. The questionnaire surveys also reveal that the students themselves consider this way of working to be highly attractive, and a factor that makes an important contribution to the success of their projects.”
Partnership makes demands
Randi Juel Olsen and Esben Østergaard Hansen both wrote their BSc projects as part of a project family, and both are now using the concept in the work on their MSc theses. They agree that the work put into the project families pays dividends.
“When you’re in a project family, you have many more perspectives on your work. You get more done in less time because you’re constantly being challenged in your way of thinking. If you’re stuck working on your project on your own, it’s a much slower process,” says Randi Juel Olsen.
Esben Østergaard Hansen adds that it is really helpful to be able to bounce ideas around with someone at the same level as you.
“Others in the project family may have finished investigating precisely the area you’re working on, so you can ask them to lend a hand. It’s more informal than having to get together with a laboratory assistant or a supervisor, for example,” he says.
Contributing to research
Approximately 50 students have been or are members of project families in one of DTU Civil Engineering’s academic development areas—ZeroWaste Construction—that has to do with reusing industrial waste as a renewable resource in new, sustainable construction materials.
Randi Juel Olsen and Esben Østergaard Hansen are two of them. The topics for their project family are linked to reducing cement consumption in concrete, where they are experimenting with using different types of ash—such as ash from wood, sludge and straw—as a cement substitute or microfiller.
“The project families work really well for our students, who can draw on one another’s academic competencies in the groups and, at the same time, contribute new solutions in the area. The students’ results are so interesting that fully 50 per cent of the projects have already been used in articles for scientific conferences. Moreover, four PhD students in the development area are actively using the results from the projects in their research,” relates Professor Lisbeth M. Ottosen, who is responsible for the field of ZeroWaste Construction.
Work in the development area known as ZeroWaste Construction has already led to several patents and a blossoming partnership with industrial players centred on innovative measures. Most recently, Lisbeth M. Ottosen has been appointed professor in the area.