COURSE DESCRIPTION

The Introduction to New Product Development (INPD) course is offered as part of the Global Competence Program, an international initiative with a series of courses that uses world class senior professionals from the United States to prepare students to become international engineers.

The Introduction to New Product Development is a team-taught core course with the following primary goals:

  • To introduce students to product development concept, principle, methodology, and resource;
  • To enable students to grasp the most popular tools being used by global engineers in developing real world new products;
  • To challenge students to innovate products based on global market needs;
  • To give students valuable hand-on experience in designing, prototyping, and fabricating physical products.

In this course, students will work with senior engineers from the United Sates to develop real products while learning Solidworks, laser­cutting, 3D modeling and 3D printing, soldering, basic circuits, microcontrollers (Arduino), sensors and actuators, and interface mockups.

PREREQUISITES

Students must be in their senior years in engineering to take the course. The course is for all engineering majors as a basic skill in developing products. 

INSTRUCTORS

The course is taught by AAFIE Global Engineering Professionals Group, a group of senior engineers from U.S. multi-national companies.

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION

Because of the hands­on nature of this course, each class has a strict limit of no more than 30 students.

The course is taught by a collaboration between senior engineers in the United States and the local universities who facilitate lab activities. A group of international senior engineers deliver real-time instructions over the Internet-based video collaboration platforms to students, monitor and direct students’ projects, while the local universities provide lab assistance to the students. 

The minimum requirements for the lab at the universities are as follows:

  • Internet access with more than 10M bandwidth;
  • laser­cutting machines
  • Solidworks software
  • 3D printers
  • Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) making tools    
  • Other fabrication tools   

Students will complete the entire coursework in the Gloer learning community, a platform specifically designed to promote global perspective, cross-cultural communication, international collaboration, and critical and creative thinking skills. In the Gloer learning community, students are guided by international mentors 

consisting of international senior engineers from multinational companies in the United States. Students need to submit their coursework to the global community, present their solutions to the global community, receive feedbacks from the global community, and complete their projects in the global community, allowing students to learn in a true global context.

TEXTBOOKS

The course is mostly about real-world international engineering experience, therefore, there are no textbooks needed. Students will leverage Internet contents for project assignments and use live recorded sessions for class review.

COURSE COMPONENTS

To complete the course, a total of 64 classroom sessions is required. The course is divided into two segments in each week:

  • Product Development Mindset (Lecture and discussion)
  • Build a New Product (Student project) 

COURSE GRADING POLICY

Classroom Participations/Responses: 20%

Project: 80%

Attendance is mandatory. Students are subject to losing points for absences unless prior approval is obtained from your Instructor or Teaching Assistant.

Late submission will be graded as normal, but with a 30% penalty. For student project, each team will initially receive a common grade, then each team member within a team will receive a different grade based on Team Evaluation.

The student project requires students to present their proposed designs in a written report and oral presentation.