In the latest tale from our Constructive Failure series, we explore a teacher’s experiment with student autonomy, testing the limits of self-directed learning in higher education.
In 2019, Thomas Loho, a newly-appointed Professional Teaching Fellow in Engineering, recognised a critical shortfall in his second-year students’ applied knowledge. Shifting gears in 2020, while teaching the same cohort in another course (CHEMMAT 302: Advanced Process Engineering), he replaced stringent coursework and focus on technical knowledge with an open-ended group project to cultivate autonomy and teamwork in applied engineering, and to prepare students for workplace realities, where the implications of their calculations matter. This redesign experiment resulted in unexpected outcomes, providing Thomas with a stark ‘reality check’ about his teaching approach. Sometimes, the best lessons are learned when things don’t go as planned.
The freedom experiment
In the redesigned course, instead of prescriptive assignments, his students, now in their third year of study, would work in groups, choosing a factory process and relating what they learned in class to how that product was actually produced. Portfolios and presentations would showcase their ability to apply concepts to real-world contexts, fostering employability and industry skills. The open-ended projects would keep students motivated, engaged and empowered in an autonomous and life-like learning environment.
‘Social engineering’
And Thomas had another core purpose – developing those critical teamwork capabilities. By allowing students to self-select their groups with no teacher oversight, he aimed to create an authentic team experience mirroring workplace realities.
“I wanted to do a group project because I’ve always gotten feedback that engineers don’t have social skills, so we need to foster social skills in their courses,” Thomas explained. “I thought the best way to get social skills is to make them work in a group project, so I just forced them into groups and let them figure it out themselves.”
Paralysis by choice
Things didn’t go as planned, though.
The amount of freedom given to students left them deeply confused, and they began inundating Thomas with queries like “What are we supposed to do for this project?”. The excessive open-endedness created a lot of anxiety in the students who wanted clear instruction.
The project was not really designed well. The motive of that project was unclear but [it was] set to be most important coursework. For future, I think, the project should simulate what we gonna face in our fourth-year project.
I think the assignment was good in theory, but was difficult when a lot of the groups didn’t learn about their concepts until nearing the end of the course. It meant that a lot of what we were writing were things that we simply found on the internet and weren’t truly understood. It made it harder for us to complete the assignment until [nearly] the final due date.
The group work was good. I felt the expectations for the design part of the course were unclear, and would have preferred high quality notes provided to communicate the design expectations and procedure to the class.
Not enough guidance toward the team project report, and missing exemplars. These made writing the project report somewhat confusing and less efficient. I wish we had some exemplars that we could refer to.
The results of working in teams were mixed too. Some groups worked amazingly well with each other, some were complete disasters and dissolved into discord. Thomas had misjudged many students’ abilities to self-regulate effective teamwork.
Moreover, because the project lacked sufficient structure, it became an unsustainable ‘time sink’. Students were asking to meet with the teaching team every day because they didn’t know what to do. They felt adrift. Or they veered into unproductive tangents and often came up with the wildest ideas far beyond the course scope, eventually also posing challenges for any meaningful assessment.
Lessons learnt the hard way
At the semester’s end, Thomas reflected on what went awry and why. Two key lessons emerged:
1. Offer guided freedom
While he succeeded in creating an engaging, student-centred experience, open-ended projects without sufficient guidance generated confusion. Moving forward, he would balance allowing freedom to apply learnings with providing enough guidelines to productively channel student efforts.
2. Explicitly teach teamwork
Merely having students work in groups was insufficient for developing collaborative abilities. Thomas recognised teamwork fundamentals also need explicit instruction and scaffolding, not just assumed familiarity. Knowing many of his students didn’t have good social skills, it “probably wasn’t a good idea to just throw them off the cliff and let them fend for themselves.”
Finding balance through reflection
Though challenging, Thomas viewed the open-ended project experience as a valuable inflection point. It empowered him to refine his approach, continually calibrating the balance between the teacher-, content- and student-centric approaches, between following instruction and out-of-the-box thinking, and between the technical knowledge and practical skills. After all, as new teachers, we often fluctuate between extremes, eventually discovering the approach that truly meets our students’ needs through trial and error.
Assigning students to work in groups was also good experience that taught his team “what to do and what not to do”. Learning takes time, but Thomas is certain he should eventually find the right balance between teaching core technical content and allowing students some freedom to find its application to real-world contexts.
Thomas has since incorporated more structured guidance in any open-ended group projects (both in-person and via Zoom), while still enabling applied learning and some creativity. Crucially, he has gained insights into explicitly integrating collaborative skill development alongside sustainable teaching practices. Overall, his failure led to significant self-reflection and growth.
Thomas wraps up, “That’s my story… hopefully, a failure that has helped me become a better teacher.”
Figure one: OBJECTIVES After you choose a topic, although each group is expected to expand upon the topic and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding, four main objectives must be answered within the final report. Objective 1 How does the unit operation(s) work? What is the theory behind the process(es)? What physical/ chemical phenomena are happening within the unit operation(s)? Objective 2 Must be answered in Interim Report. Perform a mass AND energy balance around the unit operation(s). What are the expected inputs and outputs? Must be answered in Interim Report, accompanied by NO MORE than 4 pages of Objective 3 calculations. How do the topics covered in lecture (advanced fluid mechanics, particulate technology, and particle-fluid systems) play a part within the unit operation(s)? This will involve some project- specific design and calculations. Objective 4 Must be answered in the Final Report. What are the conclusions obtained from the assignment? How feasible is the unit operation(s) in the real world? Must be answered in the Final Report.
Figure 1 – The CHEMMAT 302 project brief (2022) now strikes a good balance between open-ended projects and guided support, refining past extremes of prescriptivity and lack of guidance.
Students respond positively
From 2020, student feedback on group projects has been increasingly positive. Here’s what they found most helpful for their learning in CHEMMAT 302:
The tutorial problems were very helpful, and the project we were doing throughout the semester was a nice way to introduce us to how the concepts we were learning related to a real-world scenario.
The group assignment acted as a method of communication and collaboration between my peers. The accessibility of course materials also made things easier.
The projects which required creative and analytical thinking where there was no one correct answer.
The group assignment: it helped to visualise and understand how all the content connects.