Cross-Fertilization of Courses to Improve Student Learning

• Teaching is an area that should be in a constant ongoing development or should at least be a processquestioned and revised according to the fact that the society, the students and new knowledge aboutteaching methods are not static. Whether teaching needs to change in terms of how it can enhancestudent learning opportunities must always be subject to an ongoing process. This article describes thisneed and how changes are made to improve students learning in one of the courses in the IndustrialDesign engineering program. The set up in a program like this is a compromise between two differentprofessions as in this case between mechanical engineers and industrial designers. This is a challengethat is tainted with some problems. One of these problems is to accommodate both professions in thesame application. These compromises are never optimal solutions and this have the result that somesubjects have to disappear or be minimized from each profession. Traditionally design trainingprograms contains more of hands on education than machine engineering programs and students inindustrial Design programs are also expected to have some basic knowledge already when applyingwhen applying to their educational program. Some examples of hands on courses as Model makingand sketching cannot be studied only as theory, skills in this case needs training and also timeprovided to allow the knowledge to mature. This article describes an attempt to improve this twoprofession trade-off and how to improve learning in both practical skills and theoretical skills by anew course design. The article also shows how this example could be of interest for other programsand other courses.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Merging courses

theory-based courses

practice-based courses

teaching teams

Student learning

industrial design engineering

Industrial Design

Industriell design

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)