Guidelines to design engineering education in the twenty-first century for supporting innovative product development

ABSTRACT

In the twenty-first century, meeting our technological challenges demands educational excellence, a skilled populace that is ready for the critical challenges society faces. There is widespread consensus, however, that education systems are failing to adequately prepare all students with the essential twenty-first century knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in life, career, and citizenship. The purpose of this paper is to understand how twenty-first century knowledge and skills can be appropriately embedded in engineering education finalised to innovative product development by using additive manufacturing (AM). The study designs a learning model by which to achieve effective AM education to address the requirements of twenty-first century and to offer students the occasion to experiment with STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) concepts. The study is conducted using the quality function deployment (QFD) methodology.

KEYWORDS:

• Quality function deployment
• science
• technology
• engineering
• and mathematics
• twenty-first century skills
• additive manufacturing
• learning/training model
• engineering education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maria Grazia Violante is currently Associate Professor of Technical Drawing and Design Tools for Industrial Engineering at the Department of Management and Production Engineering of the Politecnico di Torino. From the same Politecnico, she received her Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering. In 2006 she was a visiting researcher at Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering- Loughborough University. She is author of technical papers on product design and development and interactive learning environments. Her research interest is focused on Product Lifecycle Management, Rapid Prototyping, Computer-aided Design, Virtual Reality, and E-learning.

Enrico Vezzetti received the Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from the Politecnico di Torino in 1997, and the PhD Degree in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Parma in 2001. In 1998 he was in the 3D Printing Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S.A. He is currently Associate Professor of Technical Drawing and Design Tools for Industrial Engineering at Department of Management and Production Engineering of the Politecnico di Torino. He is author of more than 80 technical papers on product design and development with specific attention on reverse engineering, rapid prototyping, collaborative design, and virtual reality. His research interests include Computer-aided Design, Computer-aided Inspection, 3D Scanners, and Virtual Reality.

ORCID

Maria Grazia Violante http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0786-0866

Enrico Vezzetti http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8910-7020