Interactive methods in engineering design education: Our experience

Under the conditions of rapid technological and cultural changes new challenges emerge for design educators. It is necessary to update and modernize the outdated educational process, including design education. This paper demonstrates our attempt to introduce new non-conventional methods in engineering design education in two fundamental disciplines such as form-formation and theory of composition. Traditionally it is accepted that knowledge can be directly transferred from the teacher to the student. Contrary to this, in interactive education students become constructors of their own knowledge while learning becomes an active quest for meanings and values - a co-participation in the educational process. Dialogue is established as the most common and underlying form of knowledge, and interchange of ideas. In search of heuristic solutions the most problematic and conflicting issues are discussed. In this paper, examples for the thematic broadening of the disciplines through their interdisciplinary correlation will be presented. Different possibilities for updating the education through introduction of the novel acquisition of scientific knowledge will be shown. The aim is to provide students with a range of options to extend further their knowledge, to motivate them to interpret the relevant information and apply it in their future work. Various established forms of student participation in the educational dialogue will be analyzed. The importance of development of heuristic thinking through analyzing problems, generalizing principles, proposing and arguing solutions is underlined. Special attention is paid to the application of the idea for competitiveness, which supports and contributes to activation and intensification of the educational process.