Agreed, but I’m not talking about totally changing a design program from blue sky to the other way, ( sorry if I wasn’t very clear in my previous post) I’m suggesting that Waziel run maybe a 2 day course as part of the program, something fast and fresh where he does set students a challenge to skin a PCB or design a pizza wheel day 1, then change the board layout or reduce the material day 2, because yes it’s easier to take a blue sky design and figure out how to build something similar, but design education should not always be about process repetition. One of my first jobs was taking something someone else had designed (and it was very uninspired) and I had to try to make it hotter and it was a great lesson that I would have enjoyed and benefitted from in university and the learning that I personally would have gained from something like this would have far outweighed 2 days and not impacted on my main study, in fact it may have been refreshing as many of the 2 day projects we did were.
For students to develop skills, to learn how to learn, they have to do projects, (Well duh! Not trying to teach you guys to suck eggs here) and I hope that what Waziel is after from us is insights into what he can form into briefs and projects so his students can learn tools to better equip them. In university was I was given a brief at the start of the project and discussed the outcome at the end, no one flipped the specs on us halfway through, as happened to me all the time when I worked in a consultancy. I appreciate this possibly isn’t the practical knowledge example that Waziels may have been after in his original question but it is something I would have benefitted from. PT