Design and Development of an Innovation Product Engineering Process Curriculum at Peking University

Abstract

Over the past decade, the elements of innovative wisdom are not only a business organization to survive in the dangerous environment, school organizations to enhance the quality of education to meet the needs of the community. For the succession challenge in the continuous impact, an innovation level of a top university covered the administration, curriculum, teaching, equipment, environment and so on is quite extensive. This paper overviews a novel curriculum at Peking University, called Innovation Product Engineering Process, established by six interdisciplinary teachers for school students in various professional fields. The curriculum aims at inspiring students to break through professional limitations for experiencing the innovation process from idea into product. The students are self-organized as a team and construct a prototype collaboratively. Instructors from industrial give a practical perspective lesson and provide market information, funding and technical support. Students in the course are fostered six expected abilities, including creativity, practical, engineering process, team-working, communication and expressiveness. Ideas from students become the topic of a project after competing in three eliminating rounds. All competitions are graded and ranked by the participators (teachers, students, instructors from academic and industry). Finally, six ideas having the opportunity to become prototypes are developed successfully with various properties. Most of students indicated that the curriculum provided them a new training experience, interesting learning style and useful content of courses.