Abstract:

The paper deals with the serendipity emerging in projects. As defined in their syllabus, the projects are concerned with students at the first, second or third grade in French Institutes of technology. The authors are working since decades in these Institutes. They are sharing their experiences, feedback and new experimentations for fifteen years. Although their research domains are different, they are always taking account of the new and running student’s behaviour on sciences and technology. A recent discussion points out the unexpected scholarships.

In projects the open minded students relayed by their open minded teachers open the door to unexpected discovery that is defining the serendipity. Last centuries gave some examples as the Archimedean buoyant force, the Gutenberg printing press or the radioactivity.
The serendipity comes from nowhere, it cannot be mastered. It cannot be taught. But, a new environment and an open mind behaviour ease the serendipity access.

Here two examples follow.
The first one deals with the concept car project. At its starts, a project was managed by a group of students interested in the 3D digitizer based on a cheap and efficient device. During one weekly briefing discussion some students talked about one of their friend fond of cars drawing. While showing its cars to the group, another student took the initiative to model the cars in a software. The concept car project was thus launched. It includes the car design, its 3D printing out, a wooden rapid prototyping and a thermoforming shape. The students in electrical engineering domain open their mind and their teacher too to the mechanical design process. All tasks have been completed in years.

The second example talks over the Regula Falsi method also called as the guess and check or trial and error method. Taught in USA as a general problem solving method in the K12 scholar curriculum, it is applied in the European countries in numerical analysis only. One author, a teacher–researcher in mechanics, discovered it in a book written by Johannes Widmann in 1489 about the pretty computations of merchants. He was first searching if the + sign was a – sign crossed out. The starting idea was coming from the system engineering, when we add something to a system we subtract the corresponding quantity to the environment. The choice of the sign – or + depends only of the point of view. The old book was the first one where the + and - signs appeared. The given explanations confirmed the idea. Reading further the book the author discovered the Regula Falsi. He composed a sheet of exercises related to his teaching. He tried it in his classroom composed of mechanical engineering students. Without any previous knowledge about the trial and error method, up to fifteen per cent of students are able to apply it. Through this unexpected cursus it appears that it is possible to start a research from a funny idea, and step after step, amazing results could be obtained inducing further researches...

Pushing the classroom walls, giving time to time, opening his mind, learning with sharing are elements of the serendipity that must reveal the students talent and free their creativity.

The authors had recently the opportunity to propose a survey about serendipity to a group of a hundred of teachers-researchers. The results and comments end the paper.

Keywords:

Projects, sharing, autonomy.