Integrating Active Methodologies in the R,D&I Projects to Improve Student's Skills: A Case Study

Companies must develop their products and operations in response to rapid technology advancements in order to remain competitive on the market. Partners, such as universities and technology centers, can collaborate on research, development, and innovation (R, D&I) projects using open innovation in an effort to increase the capillarity of strategic action. Generally, instructors, undergraduates, and technical students from a variety of fields can participate in these initiatives to enhance their professional skills and abilities. Typically, project-based learning (PBL) and design thinking (DT), and challenge-based learning (CBL) methodologies are utilized for the development of student's skills in academic projects and prototypes. Nevertheless, R, D&I efforts to solve industrial challenges show problems that require an approach to select, monitor, and evaluate skills through the performance of activities. Real problems in the factory require interaction with customers, involvement with engineers, and other team members who have responsibilities directly related to the development of hard and soft skills. The main objective was to propose an approach that aims to evaluate and analyze a collection of hard and soft skills to identify weaknesses and strengths before and during the development of a R&D project, as well as the importance of the mentor and leader in the student's professional development and through a hands-on cyclical evaluation process. Experiments in six projects involving 30 students provided the basis for case studies that demonstrated the advantages of innovative industrial design abilities over traditional PBL and DT techniques. The results indicate that the proposed technique yielded significant data on the student's soft and hard skills at the beginning and final of the project, measuring five hard skills and six soft skills crucial to professional development, as well as the mentor's participation.