HOW TO GET STUDENTS – FROM DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS AND WITH NO EXPERIENCE IN DESIGN – GOING

Students that participate in the Honours Master-course High-Tech Systems and Materials (HTSM) of the University of Groningen have different educational backgrounds, they meet for the first time, they have never cooperated with High-Tech companies and they have no experience in product development or product design. For these reasons, the students have difficulty starting their projects. To solve this problem the Workshop Evolutionary Product Design was developed. This paper explains how we work in this workshop to get the students going. Before the workshop takes place, we give the students a preparatory assignment they have to work on in groups. They have to analyse the history of both the product design, the used (production) techniques and the working principles of their assignment for the course, e.g., by using the Internet. They are supposed to prepare a short presentation of about five minutes (maximum ten minutes) about this product history. The workshop starts with a lecture introducing Evolutionary Product Development. After the lecture, the students get an additional assignment to adapt the presentation that they have made, and to add what they have just learned. The students have half an hour to work on their assignment. After this, one by one the groups present their results to the teaching staff and their fellow students. The fellow students are challenged to give their colleagues feedback. Then the staff members give their feedback. With this, the students have made a start with their assignment, which was the goal of the workshop.