The story of MUDE

Here at TU Delft, we have many wonderful education teams that, each in their own innovative way, collectively contribute to the improvement of the education at our university. The Education Team Award was created to celebrate and reward these efforts. Last year, five education teams were nominated for the Education Team Award 2023. :

  • The Architectural Recovery Team (ART)[1]
  • The Modelling, Uncertainty and Data for Engineers Team (MUDE)
  • The Pre-University Chemistry MOOC Team (PUCH MOOC)
  • The Computer Science Engineering Teaching Team (CSETT)
  • The Modelling Courses Team of the Bachelor of TPM

In a previous article, we spotlighted the strengths of these education teams.[2] In this article series, we take a step closer and discover each education team as they share with us their story, including both the challenges they faced and the achievements they are proud of.

This time we meet Justin Pittman, Patricia Mares Nasarre, Robert Lanzafame, Sandra Verhagen and Tom van Woudenberg from the module Modelling, Uncertainty and Data for Engineers Team or MUDE, from the faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences.

#2 The story of MUDE

The challenge

The story of the MUDE Team began in 2020 when the CEG faculty management made the decision for a major MSc redesign. The goal would be to offer in one large, 12 ECTS MSc module, what was until then distributed over many different degree tracks. The idea behind this ambitious redesign was that this module would provide a landing zone for students from all three CEG MSc programmes – namely, Civil Engineering, Applied Earth Sciences and Environmental Engineering. The module would offer fundamental engineering knowledge (in modelling, uncertainty and data) and skills (such as programming in Python and computer skills in general) over an extended period of time (not one, but two quarters). That is to say, the task at hand was to develop a course on more than a dozen topics covered by 50 teachers and assistants, intended for cohorts of 300+ students with diverse backgrounds and prior knowledge. A team was created to tackle this daunting task, and that is how the Modelling, Uncertainty and Data for Engineers Team or MUDE started.

The creation of the team

Originally, the team was formed top-down; from each department, members irrespective of their take on the redesign were selected to work on it. However, this was not a recipe for success. The task at hand was challenging and, understandably so, it wasn’t clear at all in the beginning how to go about it. Robert, currently coordinator of the MUDE module, describes this initial period as follows:

We would be in long meetings with a lot of people who were unsure of what to do, what was expected of them. Everyone had their own idea of what they thought would be necessary for the redesign and it was very difficult to come to any agreements. This made for rather unproductive meetings.

Robert Lanzafame

However, at some point, a more organic development started to change the team composition. The colleagues who simply did not have the time or did not get energy from working on this project, shifted more to the periphery. Instead, a core team emerged of passionate educators who saw that the idea of the redesign harboured great potential. As Sandra emphasizes, working within a smaller, highly motivated team made the communication much easier and enabled the team to create a shared vision on the redesign.

Success factors

As Justin, Patricia, Robert, Sandra and Tom unanimously confirm, teamwork was key in achieving the creation of the MUDE module, which had its second successful run this year. But in what way exactly? Of course, everyone brings their own technical expertise to the team, but there are many more ways in which working within a team played a crucial role. First of all, the very nature of the redesign would have made it virtually impossible for any one individual educator to complete it singlehandedly. Secondly, working together in a team means working together with people whom you trust. Meaning that whenever someone struggles with the workload, whenever you need someone else to help you with or maybe even stand in for you during a lecture, or whenever you feel like you have a good idea but you don’t quite know how to take it a step further, there are people on whom you can rely. That is to say, there is great chemistry in the team. Thirdly, the core team saw the redesign not merely as a challenge but mostly as an opportunity. As Robert explains, “the MUDE module offers us room for creative freedom to express ourselves as teachers”.

Another key ingredient – in the success of the team – was the way in which the team involved students in the evolution of the MUDE module. The team made a constant effort to reach out to students and talk about their experiences with the module. The team’s effort included talking to students in- and outside of class, collecting student feedback through surveys, both before, during and after following the module, and by hosting student focus groups … with sandwiches. Not only did the team actively collect the feedback, they also made a constant effort to make real time changes to the module. This quickly built a relation of trust between students who followed the course and the team and resulted in students approaching their teachers with issues and being patient with them at the same time.

Another important element of the success of the MUDE team was that they proactively created the materials they needed for the module, such as their own website and interactive textbook[3]. As Tom van Woudenberg explains, the interactive textbook played a key role in a surprising way:

One of the things that we initially did not notice very much, but which became clearer as we worked on the module, was that other colleagues at the faculty did not understand what we were doing. In the beginning, there has been resistance to the redesign because people thought that their own course would suffer from it. But when we shared our interactive textbook, things became much clearer and people started to see that we were actually doing something very interesting.

Tom van Woudenberg

Last but not least, the team indicates that they could not have done it without the help from their faculty support by providing dedicated staff for the logistics surrounding the course, a large pool of teaching assistants (bringing in very useful perspectives, skills and creative ideas) and supporting innovative initiatives like our interactive textbooks.[4]

Lessons learnt for TU Delft

Amongst many lessons mentioned above, three lessons learnt should be highlighted from the journey of the MUDE team. First of all, the chemistry in a team is highly important. Whereas a top-down formation has its advantages, it is important to take into consideration how much time and energy people are able and willing to invest in the project. The moment the team consists of intrinsically motivated members who work towards the same goal, is when the magic happens. Secondly, it is important to take into consideration that any big change – at the course, programme, department, faculty or university level – will likely encounter resistance. One effective way of preventing and dealing with potential resistance is to make sure that the thought behind change is communicated enthusiastically, effectively and transparently (not defensively). Thirdly, actively involving students in educational projects not only positively impacts the quality of the result, but also greatly improves the process.

[1] Want to know more about ART? Read the story of ART here.

[2] The article referred to here is “The Strength of TU Delft Education Teams”. Interested in the article? You can find it here.

[3] You can take a look yourself here.

[4] Curious as to how this looks like and apply it yourself? Take a look at TeachBooks here.

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