Teaching product development in a corporate education programme – a new approach

Learning and qualifications enable a company to keep technologically updated and to achieve the strict standards of productivity, speed and quality required in the product development process. However, the professionals of this process face two major challenges considering their qualifications, i.e. a holistic view and time. The former facilitates teamwork by enabling its professionals to identify the links connecting their activity with others and to become more critical about their own knowledge and their learning needs. The second challenge is time, a resource that is always in scarce supply for professionals in the area, since it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to get away from their work routine in order to dedicate themselves to learning activities. The solution to these two challenges depends on new teaching forms and resources that allow learning to occur concurrently with the execution of real projects or that resemble reality as closely as possible. Within this context, the purpose of this article is to present the product development scenario as a tool to support a corporate education program, using "learning by doing" didactics in a customised and holistic environment.