The Challenges Of Teaching An Interdisciplinary Multi Participant Manufacturing Projects Course

Good projects courses simulate the real world, generate student enthusiasm, and are rich in learning experiences. One way to enhance the real-world nature of projects courses and enrich the learning experience is to incorporate customers and senior managers--groups similar to those students will encounter on the job after they graduate--into the course. We recently team taught a manufacturing projects course to master's-level engineering and business students. This graduate course included five participant groups: instructors, students, graduate assistants, sponsors, and board members who acted as senior managers. Although including multiple participant groups enriched our students' experience in the course, it also complicated our job as instructors. This paper includes a description of our course, challenges we encountered while teaching it, and our thoughts about how to cope with those challenges.