A paper from the 2005 Built Environment Education Conference.
This paper comes from the authors' experience in organising undergraduate student projects over the past ten years. The student body numbering in the order of 55 students annually is diverse in terms of surveying degree specialisation race and ability. Careful thought has been given to group numbers and structure as there is a danger otherwise that some students will too readily rely on others or lose motivation in the face of more able colleagues. The project itself was carefully selected and a redundant large site in Dublin has been used. Within each specialisation annually the students have displayed their abilities in a group presentation as well as submitting a group report and individual elements of work. The behaviour motivation and performance of the groups being monitored annually throughout as well as the benefits of the pedagogic learning applied which have produced some interesting qualitative and quantitative results that do not entirely correlate with some of the existing prescribed theories of how groups operate most successfully. Also this paper emphasises that the nature of Surveying Education in Higher Educational Establishments brings out the best performances from students of a more practical rather than purely academic nature when group work is utilised and this reflects the learning added value achieved by Surveying Departments at Universities across the UK where significant amounts of assessed work are undertaken in groups due to the practical/vocational nature of Surveying Education.