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Transdisciplinary Bachelor Course Connecting Business and
Electrical Engineering
Fuhrmann, Thomas; Niemetz, Michael
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, OTH Regensburg,
Germany.
Abstract
The OTH Regensburg has a broad variety of study programs in technical,
business, social and health sciences. Up to now, there is no integral
connection in the bachelor curricula between business and technical faculties
except for some small subjects. The scope of this project is to develop a new
course specialization, which connects engineering and business thinking.
Electrical engineering students should learn basics of business science and
how managers think. Business students should vice versa learn fundamentals
of engineering and how engineers solve problems. Students from both
faculties work together in projects where they act like start-up companies
developing a new product and bringing it into the market. It is seen a
transdisciplinary effect: These projects gain innovative results between the
disciplines compared to student projects of one isolated discipline.
Evaluation results from the first two cohorts indicate high student
satisfaction, high learning success as well as directions for further
improvement.
Keywords: Engineering Education, Business Education, Transdisciplinary
Education, Project Based Learning.
4th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’18)
Universitat Polit`
ecnica de Val`
encia, Val`
encia, 2018
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/HEAd18.2018.8056
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Editorial Universitat Polit`
ecnica de Val`
encia 655
Transdisciplinary Bachelor Course Connecting Business and Electrical Engineering
1. Introduction
The OTH Regensburg offers study courses for technical subjects in many different areas
and in addition business and social work programs. The Faculty of “Electrical Engineering
and Information Technology” is one of the biggest faculties in this area in Bavaria with
about 1.400 students and 35 professors. It offers three bachelor programs, which were
changed some years ago to allow more flexibility for the students to select specialization
courses during their last two semesters. The Faculty of “Business Studies” offers also
application orientated education with about 40 professors and 1.800 students in several
bachelor and master programs.
2. Motivation and Study Goals
Our world is becoming more and more complex and therefore for industrial projects, labor
is divided within teams, typically between people with diverse specializations and educated
in different disciplines. This represents also a challenge for higher education institutions, as
they are required to transform their education (Holley, 2009) to prepare students for this
working environment (Holzer, Bendahan, Cardia and Gillet, 2014). Education in
interdisciplinary teams has been shown to be a very effective means for achieving this goal
with different approaches (Taajamaa et al., 2014; Bailleu, Kröger, Menge and Münchow-
Carus, 2015). Therefore, in 2013 an interdisciplinary student project was set up developing
the technical and marketing concept of a short wave amateur radio transmitter (Batz,
Pauser, Wagner, Fuhrmann and Niemetz, 2013). At the beginning of the project, students
from different disciplines had problems to understand each other. After this initial phase, a
highly motivated team formed with excellent working results. It is also often seen in
industrial projects that conflicts arise between employees from different disciplines due to
misunderstandings. To address this challenge in education, both faculties started a new
specialization within existing bachelor programs to obtain a closer relationship between
engineering and business. Students from business studies learn to understand basic
approaches of engineering while students from electrical engineering obtain an
understanding of basic management concepts. The goal of this program is to educate
graduates for bridging the gap between these two different disciplines for a better
understanding and therefore a more effective cooperation in companies (Niemetz and
Fuhrmann, 2017). To achieve this goal, students get knowledge about technology and
innovation management as well as concepts of intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship.
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Fuhrmann, T.; Niemetz, M.
3. Curriculum Development
3.1. Management for Electrical Engineering Students
About four years ago, the Bachelor “Electrical Engineering and Information Technology”
curriculum was rearranged to gain more flexibility for the students in their higher semesters
to choose preferred topics. In the sixth and seven semesters, they can choose nine modules
from a catalogue of technical electives. When choosing two modules from the business
studies curriculum for electrical engineers (see Table 1), students can obtain the additional
specialization “Engineering and Management” on their bachelor diploma.
Table 1. Module Overview - Management for Engineering Students
Module Name
Hours/Week
Credits
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management
4
5
Seminar in Technology, Entrepreneurship and Management
4
5
Business Simulation for Engineers
4
5
The first electrical engineering students start with this management specialization in
Summer 2018. Up to now, there are no evaluations and results from this part of the study
concept.
3.2. Engineering for Management Students
Business students can choose in their sixth and seventh semesters from one of nine study
options to deepen their knowledge. A new option “Engineering and Management” was
introduced in 2016 to teach business students engineering principles and connect them with
engineering students in joint projects. The course overview of this specialization can be
seen in Table 2 (OTH Regensburg, 2017). It starts with the courses “Entrepreneurship and
Innovation Management” and “Seminar in Technology, Entrepreneurship and
Management” in the sixth semester to lay a theoretical basis for the lab work “Technical
Project” and the lecture “Fundamentals of Engineering” in the seventh semester.
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Transdisciplinary Bachelor Course Connecting Business and Electrical Engineering
Table 2. Module Overview - Engineering for Management Students
Module Name
Hours/Week
Credits
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management
4
5
Seminar in Technology, Entrepreneurship and Management
4
5
Technical Project and Supplementary Lecture
4
5
Fundamentals of Engineering
4
5
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management
Principles of innovation management and related topics are taught. Models of processes,
functions and stakeholders in innovation management, strategic planning, controlling,
decision making, evaluation and ethical aspects of innovations are explained. Creative
techniques and creativity within teams are important tools for developing new products.
Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, founding lean start-up companies, managing
products and market introductions, aspects of intellectual property are also parts of this
lecture. Students learn to know the importance of innovation management for companies,
understand innovation processes and their controlling. They learn about corporate
entrepreneurship systems and their management, basic concepts of product management
and production management, introducing technology with new products or founding new
companies and protecting their intellectual property. Students work in teams, present and
discuss their results. They know different creativity and innovation management
techniques, can analyze and optimize or reorganize business innovation systems. Students
learn to know consequences of decisions in innovation systems, can solve problems and
calculate risks.
Seminar in Technology, Entrepreneurship and Management
Students learn start-up methodology, entrepreneurial marketing, developing and testing
business cases with risk and reward analysis, they plan prices, production capacities,
investments, costs, finances and market positions. They analyze industry structures and
business models. After this seminar, students know business cases and can develop
business plans. They know the interaction between technical demands and product
specifications on the one side and business and sales demands on the other side. Students
understand the roles of company founders, innovation managers and business plan
processes. They know production and capacity planning, material flow planning and human
resources planning.
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Fuhrmann, T.; Niemetz, M.
Technical Project and Supplementary Lecture
In this lab course the seventh semester business students work together with fourth semester
engineering students in small groups. Students have to create a common vision for a
product to be developed. While the engineering students are following the goal to develop a
technical solution for an engineering problem, the tasks for the business students are to
develop a cost calculation, marketing and distribution concept for this product. All students
have also to contribute to the organization of their team, e.g. by project target specification,
work package definition and time schedule planning. At the end of the course, the teams are
expected to present their results, design a poster and write an entry for the faculty internal
Wiki.
Some of the projects are listed below:
Automatic garbage can, which opens when a user approaches.
Power pack charging device, which charges a power pack during riding by
bicycle.
Automatic flower pouring with humidity sensor.
Tea timer for automatically pulling a tea bag out of a cup.
Bicycle alarm system with GPS tracking.
In a parallel supplementary lecture, the business students learn basics about electrical
components and circuits. The main lecture contents are
basic electric circuits,
electric voltage, current and power,
binary and hexadecimal numbers,
passive electric components and basic semiconductor devices,
basic structures of printed circuit boards,
development of finite state machines and
differences between parallel and serial data transmission.
Students also train to handle electronic components and solder printed circuit boards by
building up an electronic kit. In addition, questions regarding project work are clarified.
Fundamentals of Engineering
This lecture tells the students about typical engineering job profiles, like development
engineer, quality assurance engineer, process, production, marketing and application
engineer. Typical thinking processes and main tasks of engineers are explained. Students
precisely analyze a task and develop an appropriate solution, work in teams and consider
technical possibilities as well as cost restrictions. After this lecture, students should know
about job profiles of engineers and their main working principles, the importance of
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Transdisciplinary Bachelor Course Connecting Business and Electrical Engineering
specifications and how to solve problems and describe solutions. They understand
engineering thinking and are able to work together with engineers. Students know basic
approaches in developing electric and electronic devices, and have obtained an
understanding for the steps necessary to transfer prototypes into production. They learned
about requirement, quality, project and knowledge management. Students know methods to
develop time and project plans, judge critical project situations, can communicate and
cooperate within a technical working environment.
4. Evaluation Results of the Technical Project Course
For Winter Semester 2016/17, one identical feedback sheet was used for engineering and
business students. To get differentiated results, this concept was changed for the second
cohort into two separate evaluation sheets with identical questions.
4.1. Winter Semester 2016/17
No evaluation differentiation was made between business and engineering students. The
overall evaluation results were good; students were satisfied with the laboratory equipment
and group size. Project complexity was not too high, practical relevance was visible and
project goals were clear. The students were highly interested and they learned a lot during
this practical course. Contacts to professors were appropriate, questions were answered and
the atmosphere was good and motivating. Students were also asked to answer two
additional questions especially about the interdisciplinary work in the project. The first
question deals with the working climate between the faculties and it can be seen in Figure 1
that the perception of working atmosphere was very inhomogeneous. While some students
were very satisfied, some others were not happy about group dynamics.
Figure 1. All students 2016/17: It is a constructive working climate between both faculties during the project.
Figure 2. All students 2016/17: The amount I learned about methodologies and topics of the other faculty.
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Fuhrmann, T.; Niemetz, M.
Figure 2 shows the interdisciplinary learning success with a broad spread of ratings. This
feedback was not fully satisfying as a higher learning success between the disciplines was
expected. In the free text evaluation, students asked for a better interdisciplinary
preparation at the beginning of the project course. As a result of this feedback, a more
detailed introduction was given at the beginning of the project course in Winter Semester
2017/18.
4.2. Winter Semester 2017/18
In this evaluation, the feedback sheets were separated between business and engineering
students but identical questions were used. This gives the chance to see a possible
heterogeneity between both student groups. The overall evaluation for the whole project
course was very similar to the results from Winter Semester 2016/17. Students were
satisfied with laboratory equipment, practical relevance and support by professors.
Figure 3. Business students 2017/18: It is a constructive working climate between both faculties during the
project.
Figure 4. Business students 2017/18: The amount I learned about methodologies and topics of the other faculty.
All business students see a positive working climate between both faculties during the
project work (see Figure 3) and had learned a lot from the engineering side (see Figure 4).
This evaluation results indicate a high success for the concept of interdisciplinary projects.
Some of the free text answers honor the high degree of freedom in their project work. Other
business students wished to have more guidance by the professors during their project.
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Transdisciplinary Bachelor Course Connecting Business and Electrical Engineering
Figure 5. Engineering students 2017/18: It is a constructive working climate between both faculties during the
project.
Figure 6. Engineering students 2017/18: The amount I learned about methodologies and topics of the other
faculty.
Working climate (see Figure 5) and learning success from the other faculty (see Figure 6)
were seen as positive by some of the students while others were obviously dissatisfied. The
two dissatisfied students stated in their free text answers that they learned nothing from the
business colleagues, the project management within the group was not satisfying and the
business students were not very motivated in accomplishing their part of the project work.
It is clear from the statements that this was caused by a teamwork problem within this
specific group and is not a criticism of the interdisciplinary approach. Different
expectations of the two student groups were observed: While the business students in this
project had explicitly chosen this specialization and were already in their seventh semester
shortly before their graduation, the engineering students were in their fourth semester in the
middle of their bachelor education before choosing any specialization. Therefore, the
motivations for the interdisciplinary projects were different for both disciplines.
5. Conclusion and Outlook
From the evaluation results, it can be seen that the satisfaction is very high on the business
students’ side but it needs some additional work to increase satisfaction for the engineering
students, as they are too early in their study life to fully value the contribution of the other
discipline. The interdisciplinary projects yield much more innovative and better results than
projects, which are carried out by students of one faculty. It leads to the conclusion that a
transdisciplinary effect is seen which creates additional project output. There were also
discussions during the business faculty graduation ceremony 2017 where some graduates
told about their further studies in a master program or their starting career as technology
managers in industry. All of them were very satisfied with the program due to their great
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success in getting an appropriate master program or an interesting and well-paid job. The
first engineering students start in Summer Semester 2018 with entering lectures of business
sciences. They will be also evaluated to develop this program further. The overall goal is to
further develop and promote this specialization. It is seen as a great opportunity to connect
both faculties closer and educate students for an interdisciplinary working life.
References
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Batz, S., Pauser, L., Wagner, S., Fuhrmann, T. & Niemetz, M. (2013, March 13).
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Holley, K. (2009, August 18). Interdisciplinary strategies as transformative change in
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