Abstract:

The compulsory subject 'Product design prototyping workshop' is taught for the first time in the fourth year of the Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design and Product Development of the Universitat Jaume I. This course is intended for students to exercise in the development and testing of ideas and formal solutions by analyzing existing products and developing new design proposals that could lead eventually to conceptual designs of everyday objects.

This subject replaces 'Prototyping workshop', formerly taught in the second year of Technical Engineering in Industrial Design. Since in the new syllabus this subject has moved to the 4th course and has not been conducted for two years, it is suitable to monitor its implementation this course, as some contents were outdated and they have had to adjust to the new teaching format of the European Higher Education Area.

This paper describes the improvements made to the subject through an educational improvement project funded by the Educational Support Unit (USE) of the Universitat Jaume I. Conducting tests to identify shortcomings at the beginning and end of the course, a logistic model more efficient for students, preparing new audiovisual material and the use of web 2.0 resources to disseminate the work of the students are some of the novelties of this subject in adapting to European Grade. The paper concludes by assessing the positive impact and the extent of these improvements compared to the students' performance registered in the previous syllabus.

Keywords:

Industrial design, prototyping, manual skills, workshop, student–centred learning.