Work-integrated learning for master students in product development

Abstract

Both graduate and undergraduate students in design and product development acquire very specific domain related competences throughout their study programme. These educational targets, compiled in 12 domain-specific core competences a student in product development should acquire, represent the foundation on which the programme curriculum is built. Every single part of the curriculum contributes to this goal. However, to comply with the high standards industry asks, an important set of soft skills is required. These soft skills relate very much to the real-life context of the innovation-oriented firm and are difficult to simulate in an educational context. Hence, the opportunity to outsource a part of the education needs to the working environment itself. This kind of work-integrated learning, in Belgium, is well established in the context of secondary and professional bachelor programmes but hardly in the context of academic master programmes. This paper describes a pilot project at the department of product development of the faculty of design sciences at the University of Antwerp, in which nine students accomplish their master thesis in close collaboration with an industrial partner and in which a specific focus was set on acquiring additional but not domain-specific skills. Defining additional skills and monitoring the evolution through self-Assessment and self-reflection are the key enablers in this project. Throughout this project, students and industrial partners have participated in defining the approach, the competences and the way to evaluate the project.