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Breakthrough products and services (e.g., iPhone, YouTube, Facebook) show us that products must do more than just “do the job”. They must “do the job” in an overwhelming, industry transforming way to overtake competitors. What can we learn from these successes and how could this change the way we teach our students? How can students be prepared to take an active part in the creation of the next breakthrough products and services in industry?
In this paper, we describe an initiative to create a transdisciplinary project learning environment by growing on many interdisciplinary experiences and building on previous multidisciplinary successes like MATI Montréal research-transfer center (www.matimtl.ca). It regroups three institutions in engineering, education and business to develop and study the use of technology in education. MATI houses an innovative ideation support systems lab called the Hybrid Ideation Space [1]. The proposed transdisciplinary framework will be part of MATI’s strategic objectives, under its collaborative product and process design initiative.
The proposed framework will:
1) Cultivate the design and innovation abilities of students in complex and realistic industry mentored projects.
2) Make students experiment the divergent points of view and expertise from different specialists involved in industrial product development.
3) Make students participate in the complete product development and production cycle multiple times. Develop a holistic view of project issues and impacts.
4) Build international academic relations so students can have true multinational, transdisciplinary project experiences.
5) Use the projects as a basis for design methodology and tools research to improve the project framework and transfer new acquired knowledge to industry.