Volume production and the generic teaching, learning and assessment of product and furniture design

This paper explores the method of generically delivering teaching and assessment to both BA Product and BA Furniture students at De Montfort University.

De Montfort University believe they have developed an original approach to teaching and assessing seemingly ‘different types of student’ under the umbrella heading of Design Products.

A carefully crafted set of teaching and learning criteria have been developed that focus on issues generic to both sets of students making it possible to teach and assess both sets of students within common tutor groups. These methods have been rigorously evaluated over a number of recent years on DMU’s Product, Furniture and Industrial design courses.

The significance of this is the potential for much more efficient teaching and therefore more effective use of resource and the benefit of all students being able to learn from each other more effectively.

The paper explores the only limit being the requirement for design for repeatable production and not design for craft production.

Research prior to the delivery of the paper did not reveal any common parallels amongst other institutions.

Dissemination at the conference again did not reveal any parallels.

DMU therefore believe this is a unique mode of delivery.