Local Co-education in Industrial Design and Product Development: a Real Case Simulation - Five Teams, Five Companies

DS 69: Proceedings of E&PDE 2011, the 13th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, London, UK, 08.-09.09.2011

Year: 2011
Editor: Kovacevic, Ahmed, Ion, William, McMahon, Chris, Buck, Lyndon and Hogarth, Peter
Author: Terroso, Miguel; Simoes, Ricardo
Series: E&PDE
Section: Industrial collaboration
Page(s): 609-614

Abstract

The present work aims at identifying how an effective project-based learning approach, focused on meeting real product development needs of local companies, can be implemented. The main issue is determining how project-based learning can be employed successfully to ensure students acquire the skills and knowledge required by companies. To this end, we propose a model for co-education, materialized and validated in a final-year industrial design degree course, with student groups working in cooperation with local SMEs. The proposed approach differs from others in the literature in 3 key features: it is prescriptive, it considers the final result (not just the process), and it involves local companies throughout the development stages. The developed work represents a contribution to an improved understanding of project-based learning and co-education.

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