Yesterday I was walking home across campus when I came upon the ultimate in practical coursework exercises.
(Apologies for the low picture quality.) The Kent School of Architecture has an annual exercise where students have to design and build an overnight shelter, and then stay in it overnight.
This has both an immediate educational function, as well as bonding a cohort together. There are other examples. Years ago I shared a flat with a music student, and on day one of the course they went to the intro talk, expecting a generic blah about the course content and so on; instead, a professor said to them “in two weeks time there will be a fully-staged performance of West Side Story on this very stage. And, you will be responsible for every aspect of the performance: acting, singing, playing in the orchestra, designing and building the sets and costumes, …”. What a brilliant introduction to the course!
What is the analogy in other subjects? I am thinking about how we could reform our undergraduate computer science course right now, and it would be wonderful if we could come up with something as inspiring as this for our students.