A different approach on gaining practical experience by acting as an (open) innovator at Industrial Design Engineering

At Industrial Design Engineering we aspire to provide contemporary education, both in the content of the program as well as the way in which we teach. We aim to facilitate our students to become responsible entrepreneurs of their own learning experience. At the start of the second year we challenge students to initiate, organise and execute individual, international research abroad for 3 months. Students have to choose a research topic, initiate contact with companies and set-up a project. This ambitious setup at first creates confusion and excitement among the students. However, facilitated by a step-by-step approach, students arrive to inspiring research projects driven by their personal interests. We conducted a case study research to evaluate the educational approach as being successful in stimulating student entrepreneurship. We studied both the preparation course and the student projects. Insights on this approach are retrieved through the collection of multiple data from multiple sources and qualitative analyses. Results indicate that the majority of students are capable of designing an individual research project in an international setting and the balance between freedom and structure resulted in constructive friction