A new platform to boost project-based learning at EPFL

Keeping up with the program's evolution

Originally limited to a few one-off projects such as the SwissCube, the Solar Decathlon and the Hydrocontest, interdisciplinary projects at EPFL have evolved significantly over the last ten years. Now grouped under the MAKE Program, these projects promote learning by doing across the campus, actively involving over two thousand EPFL students from all sections.

To function, such a program relies on a network of human resources including coaches, professionals, teachers and a team of coordinators, as well as a network of state-of-the-art equipment and specialized workshops for prototyping in electronics, mechanics or wood. Today, all this forms a complex ecosystem in which students sometimes find it difficult to find their way. The need to develop a website to centralize all this information gradually emerged as the ideal solution.

“My role was to develop the project portfolio. This involved daily exchanges with students, and I observed a lack of awareness of the school's network, a lack of understanding of what exists within it, and of the people who can provide them with help and expertise in realizing their ideas”, explains Julien Delisle, MAKE Program Coordinator.

This lack of clarity was an obstacle to the interdisciplinarity at the heart of the program: “We had projects that were supposed to be interdisciplinary, but which were born in the sections, somewhat isolated from each other. In this context, it was very complicated to promote interdisciplinarity and explain to students that other resources existed elsewhere.”

Students at the heart of the process

“We've always made sure that our students were actively involved in building this program. They were the first to work hard to find space, mobilize their peers and negotiate funding for their projects. When SPOT opened two years ago, we put together a team of twelve student assistants who do a remarkable job of helping us manage our two makerspaces and build a community within them. We value their contributions and points of view, and aim to build something for them that really meets their needs. So it seemed only natural that one of them should be at the helm of this development,” explains Julien.

That's how Yohan Abehssera, a second-year master's student in cybersecurity, came on board. With a wealth of experience as a service desk assistant, where he provided both Poseidon and 1234 support for several years, Yohan became familiar with the MAKE ecosystem during his participation in the “Making Intelligent Things” course (see video presenting the course here), taught entirely in the SPOT makerspace. So well placed to understand the needs the platform had to meet, he decided to get involved. Initially tasked with small, occasional IT assignments, enabling him to maintain his commitment to the service desk in parallel, he was finally offered the development of this website, to which he decided to dedicate himself exclusively.

“For me, it was a great opportunity, because it gave me a project of my own where I could do whatever I wanted, even if of course it was supervised and I wasn't the only one working on the platform”, says Yohan.

Indeed, it was with the support of a team made up of Elliott Moiroud, a student at Université Savoie Mont Blanc doing an internship on the project, Melany Gilis, an external consultant in multimedia projects, and Alessandro Crespi, researcher and head of IT infrastructure for the MAKE program, that Yohan was able to put his academic knowledge into practice, while at the same time learning new skills on his own.

“This is the first time I've created a website. I was motivated by the impact such a platform could have. I chose and trained on a framework called Laravel thanks to online resources, and then I applied the concepts we'd seen in some courses, like SDP (Software Development Project), to complete the project and make sure it's maintainable, that it can be taken over by someone else later, that the code is clean, pretty, functional, and well documented.”

A choice for managing user and resource databases, and offering the possibility of creating tailor-made functionalities for coaches. “With this framework, it's possible to create dynamic tools that enable coaches, for example, to offer training sessions, modify and manage their resources, their own spaces; it's a very versatile tool with almost infinite potential for evolution,” explains Yohan.

An evolving platform

After a test phase during which this new MAKE! platform was made available to a limited number of users, it is now accessible to all, and will continue to be enriched and evolved to meet students' future needs. For example, a questionnaire project is currently under development, which will direct students towards a project according to their interests, and will also be able to link projects currently being recruited with students looking to get involved.