Teaching a Course on Product Development

Product development is a multi-disciplinary task. However, the skills universities teach typically are limited to the students’ discipline area. In many cases, students graduate with little or no exposure to other disciplines and without any knowledge of how to operate in teams with different skills. My course idea was born to help fill this gap and introduce engineering students to the real-life experiences of product development.

I did some research on similar courses but I was surprised to find very few examples of such offerings. While a few courses exist, they are far from common.

With this, I approached my alma mater, where I received my M.Sc. degree, Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, and proposed to deliver a course on product development. I received a very warm welcome and my course is approved for the summer term.

Now, the real work starts on my part. That is, preparation of the course materials, textbook selection, case studies & guest speakers, so on so forth. I am both excited and scared of the upcoming summer. My excitement comes from the opportunity to share my learnings of the years I spent in product development. I am scared of the challenges in keeping the topic interesting and engaging during a summer term.

I am looking for any input from current educators. All advice and suggestions are welcome to make the course more effective.

Thanks.