An Approach to Teaching Innovation Processes in Engineering

Engineering curricula are typically jam-packed with technical courses, leaving little room for important nontechnical topics. One of the subjects many engineers in a wide variety of fields would benefit from is innovation, but the full scope of innovation theory is seldom taught at universities. One reason for this is that innovation is an interdisciplinary topic, with insights available from many different fields. At UALR, we have implemented several classes that teach innovation from an interdisciplinary viewpoint. These classes contain students from a variety of majors, including engineering, business, psychology and art. The mix of students creates an exciting dynamic in the classes, but also raises some challenges. In this paper, our approaches to teaching innovation and design are discussed, with attention paid to successes and failures. Finally, ideas for effectively creating an engineering program that includes innovation theory are discussed.