Below is an article written by speech pathology student Terissa Morgan, about an interesting opportunity for collaboration between engineering & speech pathology.
“Thinking Outside The Box” In Collaborative Practice, by Terissa Morgan
At the end of April, Alicia and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with some engineering students from the University of Wollongong. These four obviously talented individuals were each studying different types of engineering; management, civil and electrical. They had come together in a subject called “innovation and design”. They had a very interesting assignment: to create an innovative, original product exemplifying their understanding of the engineering design process. The aim was to learn about the relationship between design and human issues.
A product to help adults overcome communication difficulties
The boys decided to create a product, which could potentially help adults with communication problems. Of course this overlaps with speech pathology! They searched for more information, came across Wollongong Speech Pathology, and contacted Beth for help. When we met with them at Wollongong University, we were hoping to have all the answers to their questions. Alas! They stumped us with a few. These guys had never had any previous experience with speech pathology and it was fascinating to see their perspective on it. It really showed us that when you are wholly engrossed in a job (or for us a degree) you sometimes only look at things in the way you have been taught to. Some might call it “speech pathology thinking”.
A unique opportunity to collaborate
This was a wonderful lesson for us in “thinking outside the box” and also in collaborative practice. It is great to be able to work with people from other professions and so interesting to see the different ways you can approach a problem. It also pushed us to find the answers to the questions we could not answer for them. This has opened many ports of conversation for us as students. We wish the boys good luck in their endeavours and can’t wait to see what they come up with!
