Maynooth International Engineering College (MIEC) third year students took part in a Climate Response Ireland project. The project was jointly funded by Maynooth University Future Ready Initiative, HEA Innovation and Transformation Fund Ireland, and Climate Response Ireland (CRI). The aim of the project was to foster innovative teaching methods in third level higher education.
CRI is a community organisation, interested in monitoring environmental pollution and developing software system for monitoring and measuring pollutants generated by domestic heating systems and fires.
Students worked collaboratively on this project and were given flexibility in design, development, and use of technologies. The project was designed to improve student learning experience, student ownership of work, and to enhance student engagement in the classroom.
Throughout the development process and the interactions with the project stakeholders, the students encountered many technical and design challenges. They were independently seeking and evaluating solutions to the problems and forming an inquiry-based learning.
The innovation highlights the establishment of a student-centred learning environment and a simulated real-world software development environment in the classroom. The learning experience and soft skills gained from partaking in the project prepare our students for their industry work placement.
Congratulations to the following student groups that won the top prizes:
- Group 1: Hui Yang, Deyin Huang, Zixi Chen, Jiasheng Xu (team leader), Yinxuan Feng and Yilin Xu
- Group 2: Zhimeng Chen, Bingyu Yao, Ding Xiaoyi, Ruoqing Hu, Zeyu Chen (team leader), and Yu Xuan Chen
- Group 3: Zhezhi Lin, Lihao Qiu, Zejie Yan, Jian Wei Zhao, and Mengyu Rao (team leader)
CRI and MU also held a competition for a Micro Internship, which was won by Team 1, led by Jiasheng Xu. The internship offered students additional opportunity to work with CRI.
Congratulations to the students for taking part in both competitions. An award ceremony was held in MIEC to celebrate the MIEC student winners on the 9th March 2022. Chair of CRI, Kevin Mullen, on the success of the student project work:
“I would like to say that all the teams have done exceptionally well. I am very pleased with all that they have done. The achievement of each team using such a variety of technologies has been remarkable and impressive.”