RE-DESIGNING OF A PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT COURSE FOR MECHANICAL ENGINEERING STUDENTS BY SHIFTING RESPONSIBILITIES TO THEM

Market needs and customer expectations on new products grow continuously, which increases the requirements on the product engineers and designers. Respectively is becomes real challenge to educate engineering students theoretically by studding contemporary methodologies in design and practically mastering skills in multi-disciplinary product development process while taking the product life cycle into consideration.

The presented paper is meant to introduce an experiment in teaching Product development course for Mechanical engineering students at bachelor level. After teaching the course in several years we experience that, teaching creativity, critical thinking and decision making by presenting different tools and techniques, it could be hard to make it inspiring enough for the students. During the fall semester of 2014 a decision was taken to redesign the course by shifting some teaching responsibilities to the students. They were involved in delivering the lectures. There were benefits but also some problems which will be discussed in this paper. The conclusion made after this experiment reflected in the course planning for the next year.