Scaffolded projects in fluid mechanics: how to make 120 students in 20 groups work on self-defined projects without overloading the teacher

This paper presents a structure for student projects based on design thinking, demonstrated in a fluid mechanics course with approx 120 students. The project combines advanced problem solving, innovative application of acquired knowledge, simulations for engineering purposes and often also experiments. Eventually, all student groups present a poster with a unique, self defined study of an applied phenomenon. The innovative aspect of the project structure lies in the progression of tasks supported by a sequence of seminars. The main principle is that each seminar should lower the thresholds for the coming tasks, guiding student groups through a complex project with a limited amount of teacher time. The format is designed to be teaching efficient and scalable, with a teacher workload of about 13 hours per 50 students. The student workload should be around 40 hours. The underlying project structure can be used with many combinations of theoretical and applied subjects; the example presented here is centred around fluid mechanics. The starting point for all project groups is a well-defined problem, taken from previous exams in the course, and the result is one poster per project group presenting a unique analysis where the physics of the exam problem is applied to e.g. geophysical flows, food-processing or crowd modelling. The activity works well both in class and online, and has also been used as a tool for online student exchange between Sweden and Japan.