The VIDEEO project: teaching cross-disciplinary subjects

Students of today need to understand the context within which to fit their theoretical knowledge. This paper reports on an approach to cross-disciplinary learning that deploys student-centred group projects of an international nature, and focuses on the teaching module titled Europreneurship-Creating Innovative Product Ideas in Europe. This module was chosen to head VIDEEO projects with students during the 1999/2000 session. Students from Glasgow Caledonian University in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and Mercuria Business School in Helsinki, Finland participated in this project, which included videoconferencing. The paper presents the results from several years of development, outlining strengths and weaknesses of the approach. Specific references are made to evaluative activities from both the student and the staff perspective and of the web-based learning environment that was created to facilitate the student projects. General observations made from the results of this study include that engineering students are not taught to develop products, and that no one appears to teach the benefit of partial information. In providing large open-ended projects, students are given preparation for what is to come in the normal commercial environment.