Enhancing the Innovation Skills in Engineering Students
Year: 2012
Editor: Lyndon Buck, Geert Frateur, William Ion, Chris McMahon, Chris Baelus, Guido De Grande, Stijn Verwulgen
Author: Dekoninck, Elies
Series: E&PDE
Institution: University of Bath, United Kingdom
Section: Engineering and Product Design Practice
Page(s): 431-436
ISBN: 978-1-904670-36-0
Abstract
The paper looks at the skills needed for innovation - such as tenacity, independence, imagination, risk-taking, creativity, intuition and leadership – and then identifies typical gaps in those skills within engineering students. The paper presents the case study from the University of Bath focusing on creativity, design and prototyping skills. The aim of the paper is to present the work that has been done on an engineering design unit to boost creativity, design and prototyping skills for engineers. The paper presents evidence of changes in the students’ innovation skills (self-assessed) from the protocol analysis of independently conducted interviews and focus group. The paper then goes on to discuss the overall learning from the teaching approaches focusing particularly on the extent to which the skills needed for innovation have been enhanced.
Keywords: Innovation, skills, engineering design, product design, teaching approaches, tenacity, independence, imagination, creativity, uncertainty, ambiguity