Page 27 - 05

26 Ş.HELVACIOĞLU

groups so that he/she is prepared better to plan and contribute to group work (Jones, 1991). Despite the
initial resistance from the students at ITU the groups are established as heterogeneous as possible and as a
consequence, they carried out their work successfully except a few groups.

2.2 Team of Lecturers

Every lecturer at the department teaches one or more subject individually, and usually they teach the same
subjects over the years. In SDP, lecturers attend the class together and have a chance to examine each other's
work. On the other hand, they communicate with designers concerning the students’ projects. Designers
and lecturers can observe the technological gaps between the universities and the industry with
understanding the significance of joint work to close the project gaps.

The success of many aspects in engineering education generates complacency and increases resistance to
changes in design where failure is evident. Advancing the frontiers of engineering education requires
improving design education.

2.3 Support from Designers

Designers and shipyards in Turkey have been working overloaded for the last few years. They have been
seeking for talented and experienced naval architects. The first year ship design project lecture gathered a
set of designers to discuss the lecture layout, ask their opinion about the system, and whether they were
eager to collaborate. They were excited and became enthusiastic about the work project with young naval
architects. However, during the semester they sometimes found it difficult to have spare time to
communicate with lecturers and students in sharing their time and knowledge. Some experienced naval
architects attended lectures regularly from the industry for the improvement of the students' communication
skills and their self-confidence.

2.4 Team Work Principles

The National Academy of Engineering and ABET committees with other governing engineering education
bodies around the world required that an actual design example should be included in the engineering
education. In the last decade focus on design experience had impacts on teaching teams, teamwork and on
the student teams in developing their designs (Lamb and Cooper, 2006).

Team work with student aims to simulate a project office environment and to fulfill ABET requirements.
In an office, everybody is different and nobody can choose his\her office mate. The employees of an office
should deal with difficult situations with solutions in a positive way that is exactly what one expects from
the students. In this manner the team rules and a ship design project development are set in advance
(http://www.gidb.itu.edu.tr/staff/projedersi/index.htm). Every team has 4 or 5 students from different levels
ranging from the best to the worst. It is rather difficult for somebody to change his/her team, but still it is
allowed within the first four weeks. However, a new employee cannot change his/her job because of the
contracts made until the end of project. It is important to remember that the students should abide by the
strict professional life rules.

Every group should have a leader, secretary and controller. The leader and the other members of the team
have the same responsibility in the project. Leadership concept in the team helps students to improve their
management abilities. The members share the parts of the project, but at the end, everybody should know
all the details of the project. They have to teach each other and improve their knowledge collectively. If
one of the members lags behind the team work then he/she should be graded as "unsuccessful".

GiDB|DERGi Sayı 5, 2016