Retrospective study on teaching engineering design and product development
Year: 2013
Editor: John Lawlor, Ger Reilly, Robert Simpson, Michael Ring, Ahmed Kovacevic, Mark McGrath, William Ion, David Tormey, Erik Bohemia, Chris McMahon, Brian Parkinson
Author: Lehtonen, Timo Artturi; Juuti, Tero; Rättyä, Kaisu; Vanhatalo, Mikko
Series: E&PDE
Institution: 1: Tampere University of Technology, Finland; 2: University of Eastern Finland
Section: Knowledge
Page(s): 414-419
ISBN: 978-1-904670-42-1
Abstract
A professional designer is able to make long reaching and correct conclusions from seemingly inadequate amount of information available. He/she has a comprehensive mental model on the topic in which he/she is working on. All of the information within the context is observed through this model. From the higher education pedagogy point of view, this kind of holistic insight belongs to the most difficult topics to teach. One approach to solve this is to completely abandon the conventional top down approach to curriculum planning. This approach however sets requirements on facilities, increases the amount of education personnel and is often impossible to accomplish parallel with conventionally arranged teaching modules. Instead of one big leap, there is also a possibility for an incremental change. In this paper, the elements of incremental change are defined and experiences on ten years teaching development work are analyzed.
Keywords: Systemic knowledge, learning process, knowledge content, student, community