WILLIAM LI: Well, I think the first thing
to say in terms of tips for educators
is to really encourage you or really encourage them to do it.
It's a very rewarding experience.
I think that the opportunity to engage with community
organizations and assistive technology users--
people with disabilities in the wider community,
beyond a college campus-- is for us
as instructors a very rewarding and exciting experience.
And you also find within the university itself
a lot of support and interest-- people
who want to bring their own experiences
or different aspects of the university that maybe work
in assistive technology or Student Disability
Services that really get very excited-- or in design,
or in engineering, and so on.
And the students themselves, I think
it's really a special group of students who
are interested in this topic.
I think that's really probably the biggest
kind of joy of working in a class like this--
the kind of experiences that students
bring to the table, the dedication
that they bring to the class.
So there's sort of a big need out there.
There's sort of a big interest from students.
The other core part I would say is, there's no doubt,
I mean logistically it's always a lot of work
to bring together-- different partners
or find people out in the community,
and find lab spaces and places to build prototypes, and so on.
And I wouldn't even claim that we
tried to make it particularly efficient this year.
I think to us, particularly given the circumstances
and given that we were doing this for the first time,
we tried a lot of experiments that did
require more time to set up.
That might be one thing to say to
that-- there might be more sort of efficient ways
to put this all together.
But the big thing that I think comes
to mind is that it's really the students working
with their client-- or it's really
the results of this interaction between the students
and their client that really motivates students
to learn, and to develop new skills,
and to put a lot of time and effort into their projects.
I really think that the way the relationship between clients
and students is set up really drives the course.
It's really the clients that work with the students who
do a really substantial part of the teaching associated
with the class.
So in terms of learning outcomes or in terms
of the things that students learn in the class is really
big gains, I guess, to be gotten from a setup like this.
GRACE TEO: I have two tips for other educators.
I think the first one is, before the semester starts do
all your homework as to where all
the resources within your school are
and within your community, because you have no idea where
the projects are going to go and what help your students are
going to need.
There is no way that you yourself
are going to possibly have all the skills to teach them
how to do things.
So just make as many friends as possible, who are on your side
and who are willing to help out the students
with their projects.
The second tip is that 80%-- 70% to 80% of the work
is all about people management.
At the end of the day, you're trying
to facilitate students working for a client.
And the students are usually novices at this.
And most of the trouble that the students have come down to,
the client wants this, or the client is doing this,
and it's very discouraging, or we don't
know how to do this for them.
And so being able to facilitate that relationship
becomes a big part of the work.
WILLIAM LI: One other tip I would share
is really in terms of the setup of the class.
I think we really do believe that working
with the real clients over the semester
is really at the core of this, as opposed to maybe working
more theoretically in terms of assistive technology design
or kind of a generalized more abstract need.
I think what I've seen is that really sharpens
the particular need that students
identify and try to fulfill.
It certainly motivates students to try
to get their project working.
And it also just ends up, I think,
being just a stronger learning experience
for everybody involved-- just kind
of that human side of things.
So I know there's a lot of moving parts in the class
that we've put together this semester.
But from what I've seen, I think working with a client,
and I think that associated with that is the efforts
to identify the right groups of people to work with, I think
is really important.
And I think there's some question always about, well,
if you work with one particular person,
does that mean you sort of overfit
to that particular person?
Is this kind of product only going
to be useful to that one person in the world perhaps?
And the answer might be, yes, sometimes.
I mean, it's very customized and it works, hopefully,
for that particular person.
And intrinsically, I'd argue at least that that's a good thing.
But the other aspect-- and I think
a student wrote about this in one of the blog posts--
is that I think doing this kind of design for one
and making it work end to end really
can be a successful way of teaching design or teaching
engineering and could lead as well
to kind of successful ideas or successful solutions
in assistive technology that are applicable to more
than one person.