Project Work

We recommend that all exchange students make a project. Project work is a way of incorporating real-life contexts into the study programmes. Typically, students work in teams of four on a problem that they would like to analyse and solve - sometimes in cooperation with a company. Staff from the faculties will, of course, assist the students in forming teams and finding possible ideas for a project. All teams will have one or more supervisors attached. These supervisors will guide the students through their project work.

Example:
A Danish company wants to design and market a machine for export to an African country.
Such a project would have several elements:

• A technical element - How to design the machine? A mechanical engineering student would focus on this part of the project.
• A marketing/economic element - How to sell/market this machine in an African country? A business student would focus on this part of the project.
• A linguistic/cultural part - What should be known about that particular country/culture in order to sell the product to the customers? What are the traditions, customs and behaviours of this culture? A linguistic student would focus on this project part.

When the students have formed groups, they will write a project description and make a report in English.
At the end of the semester, the project will be evaluated when the students present their work and answer questions individually in relation to their work.

Framework for Study Projects, Autumn 2007

Outcome of Project work
By working in teams, students will learn how to cooperate with others who have different skills than their own, how to work in multicultural teams and, finally, how to work in a way that is widely used in real-life today.