Automated system test schedule

Abstract

The Manchester School of Architecture has advanced peer-to-peer learning by linking multi-level group work with its outreach work. This pedagogic approach has become an essential vehicle to progress the School’s ambition to connect academia, the architectural profession and societal networks whilst offering a rich learning experience for the student. Embedded into the curriculum, the School adopts this approach at key points during the academic year, requiring students to collaborate through intense ‘vertical’ projects. Students from different levels of study across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes unite to explore an architectural proposal or contemporary agenda in relation to a live project as group work. The addition of external collaborators, who may act as client or participate as an active team member, enhances student learning, experience and debate. This paper will introduce and analyse this model’s pedagogy and good teaching practice through two examples of the School’s established peer learning projects, the Events Programme (2008 to date) and the All School Project (2015 to date). Sitting at each end of the academic year and driven by live agendas, these vertical projects provide an experimental area for design and research. The All School Project (September) involves the entire school responding in teams to a single brief created in collaboration with a local external partner to rapidly produce 50 solutions to a single design or research question. The Events Programme (April) is a collection of 20 collaborative projects. Working with a live client, the brief for each ‘Event’ is prepared by groups of three or four students in the postgraduate MArch course and delivered to groups of approximately 16 undergraduate students from the BA (Hons) course in Architecture Years 01 and 02. Activities during Events are researched, designed, planned and taught by MArch students who are then assessed on their project management.