CROSS-FERTILIZATION OF COURSES TO IMPROVE STUDENT LEARNING
Year: 2016
Editor: Erik Bohemia, Ahmed Kovacevic, Lyndon Buck, Christian Tollestrup, Kaare Eriksen, Nis Ovesen
Author: Holmqvist, Bengt; Hĺkansson, Anders
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Luleĺ University of Technology, Innovation & Design
Section: Ethics
Page(s): 626-631
ISBN: 978-1-904670-62-9
Abstract
Teaching is an area that should be in a constant ongoing development or should at least be a process
questioned and revised according to the fact that the society, the students and new knowledge about
teaching methods are not static. Whether teaching needs to change in terms of how it can enhance
student learning opportunities must always be subject to an ongoing process. This article describes this
need and how changes are made to improve students learning in one of the courses in the Industrial
Design engineering program. The set up in a program like this is a compromise between two different
professions as in this case between mechanical engineers and industrial designers. This is a challenge
that is tainted with some problems. One of these problems is to accommodate both professions in the
same application. These compromises are never optimal solutions and this have the result that some
subjects have to disappear or be minimized from each profession. Traditionally design training
programs contains more of hands on education than machine engineering programs and students in
industrial Design programs are also expected to have some basic knowledge already when applying
when applying to their educational program. Some examples of hands on courses as Model making
and sketching cannot be studied only as theory, skills in this case needs training and also time
provided to allow the knowledge to mature. This article describes an attempt to improve this two
profession trade-off and how to improve learning in both practical skills and theoretical skills by a
new course design. The article also shows how this example could be of interest for other programs
and other courses.
Keywords: Merging courses, theory-based courses, practice-based courses, teaching teams, Student learning, industrial design engineering.