CAD/CAM and jewellery design education

The paper analyses pedagogical methods for incorporating computer aided design and manufacture into higher education jewellery design based on surveying five European universities: Birmingham City University (UK) Loughborough University (UK), Polytechnic of Milan (I), Kolding Design School (DK), Eindhoven University of Technology (NL). It seeks to identify strengths and weaknesses in contemporary teaching practices; highlighting innovative methods that nurture design problem solving, technical competence, exploration of new materials and dynamic form generation. Investigations concern possible teaching strategies for instructing students in the use of Computer Aided Design (CAD), through software such as Rhino3D, JewelCAD, Illustrator and Maya. Alongside modes of teaching Computer Aided Manufacture (CAM) including subtractive and additive technologies such as 3D Printing and CNC milling, alongside planar production through laser cutting and digital photo-etching

An empirical investigation of the relationship of CAD use in designing and creativity through a creative behaviours framework

This thesis reports a study of the relationship of CAD use in designing and creativity through a Creative Behaviours Framework. This thesis provides a description of the establishment of a framework for gathering empirical evidence to support the analysis of links between CAD and creativity. The Creative Behaviours Framework consists of seven categories including novelty, appropriateness, motivation, fluency, flexibility, sensitivity, and insightfulness. The framework was developed from published literature largely relating to the area of cognitive psychology. The research reports findings concerning the use of this framework in analysing the use of CAD at Loughborough University and involved four postgraduates, two finalist undergraduates, and the researcher s own design project. Multiple data gathering methods including interviews, observations, protocol analysis, and design diaries have been used in this study to provide data reliability and validity. The results demonstrate the occurrence of creative behaviours in relation to the use of CAD when designing. Most of the categories had a significant number of occurrences observed and identified in the case studies using the data gathering methods (in particular protocol analysis and design diaries). However, novelty was only reported from the design diaries in Case studies 1 and 2. Some findings that linked the emergence of xvi creative characteristics of product outcomes with CAD usage were also established from data analysis of the design diaries. Hence, a key research output is the development of a framework which enabled researchers to observe and identify creative behaviours whilst CAD was used in designing. This framework has shown its reliability by also capturing creative behaviours in other than CAD activities such as 2D sketching and 3D sketch modelling. The findings from Case studies 1 and 2 indicated that creative behaviours were consistently identified during the observations of these design modelling activities. It shows that the Creative Behaviours Framework is not exclusively useful to observe creative behaviours during CAD use, but can also be applied in identifying these behaviours in other designing activities. An online questionnaire explored whether this framework could also be useful in wider application such as in supporting teachers in developing effective classroom and studio practice to encourage the emergence of creative behaviours by their students. The research study (using case studies and paper questionnaires) was undertaken with students of the Design and Technology Department, Loughborough University and the findings could be biased to this particular population. Hence, the online questionnaire was carried out with Malaysian CAD users to provide broader feedback. Although there was a small number of responses received from Malaysia, the data still provided a useful foundation to make the comparison between the UK and Malaysian CAD users perceptions about the relationship between creativity, in particular creative behaviours and the use of CAD in designing

International Student Projects and Sustainable Development Goals: A Perfect Match

Engineering Education is currently going through a transformation, driven by the need for educating better engineers and more engineers, and largely build on elements such as problem orientation, interdisciplinarity, internationalization, digitalization and sustainability. In 2020, the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership EPIC (Improving Employability Through Internationalization and Collaboration) has combined all these elements, and demonstrated how international and interdisciplinary student projects, focusing on solving real-world problems related to sustainability, can be carried out in a setting where students mainly work together online. A total of 56 students from 7 EU and 2 international universities, with backgrounds ranging from Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering to Textile Technologies and Business Informatics were working on 9 different projects throughout the spring of 2020. The paper presents the experiences from the setup and discusses some general recommendations for setting up this type of projects. The paper goes through the stages of defining and carrying out the projects: Defining the overall framework, identifying problems/project proposals in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, identifying the students and assigning students to projects, preparing students and supervisors, organising the physical kick-off seminar, and supporting the online collaboration. We also discuss evaluation and hand-over of the solutions, to ensure the projects have a lasting impact. We conclude that the sustainable development goals provide a highly motivating framework for interdisciplinary, international student projects based on problem-based learning. We also note that a careful design and execution of the all the preparatory stages are crucial in order for the projects to succeed, and discuss specific recommendations for these.</p