Formal lectures and laboratory experiments do not give students sufficient experience of welding processes applied to specific fabrications. A series of designs has been evolved which ib.capable of being fabricated by several different methods and students are required to produce fabrication procedures for each design. Suggested procedures are then discussed in an open forum in which both staff and students participate. The use of these exercises has been found to be a useful method whereby course members can pass on their own experience to other students and in which students learn to make decisions based on available, but often incomplete, facts.