From September 3rd to 4th, the first all-English course “Product Innovation Management and Project Management” (Project Management and Innovative Project Development, PMIPD) of the Training Center was successfully held. The course was offered and taught by Zhu Feng, the director of the Intelligent Manufacturing Laboratory of the training center. It was open to international and domestic students of the whole university. Thirteen undergraduate students and seven postgraduate students from more than ten departments and colleges such as Weiyang Academy, School of Architecture, School of Economics and Management, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Automation, Industrial Engineering, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry Department, and English Department, as well as different countries and regions, participated in this course. Among them, two doctoral students from Pakistan and Cameroon respectively specially modified their international postgraduate training plans to study the course. The course was carried out in a blended online and offline mode.
Instructor of the course - Zhu Feng
The course was carried out through theoretical knowledge, case analysis, course discussion, actual product experience and other links around the management of innovative products and projects. Combining with the classroom knowledge, the students were divided into five groups and completed the project management tasks from idea generation to product implementation with the themes of XGarden for young people psychological problem, XiaoJing for elderly silver people, CVG for early detection on serious viruses, OKA for Pet Health Monitoring, and Tepper for social oral health.
The Course Teaching Team
(from left to right: Li Fan, Li Peiyang, Chen Li)
The course teaching team included Li Fan, deputy director of the teaching and research section of the Training Center, Li Peiyang, CTO of Davinci Motor Company and an alumnus of the Department of Automation, Alexander Kremer, president of Picus Capital China and an alumnus of the Schwarzman College, and Chen Li, vice president of Picus Capital China. The course team provided students with multi-dimensional learning perspectives from academic theory to industrial practice.
Group photo of the teachers and students
This course is the first English course offered by the Training Center and is an international education and training around innovation, entrepreneurship and engineering practice. In the future, the Center will continue to offer English courses in the spring and autumn semesters. The courses aim to improve the international competitiveness and innovation ability of Tsinghua students at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral stages and cultivate the academic vision and engineering implementation and execution ability to apply intellectual achievements such as technology and academics to industrial practice.
In class
Course Evaluation:
Comments 5: “How to learn project management and innovation management in only two days?” The doubts before taking the course completely disappeared after 16 class hours. Teacher Zhu's course is a very free and flexible teaching method rarely seen in Tsinghua, focusing on interaction and inspiration, and inviting entrepreneurship and venture capital predecessors to introduce real experiences on site. Through the most basic knowledge and the fullest practice within a limited time, the management knowledge and methods that are easy to make people feel large and empty are well absorbed and mastered by the students. Following the course rhythm until the end of the course, the product of our Group A focusing on young people's psychological problems was also successfully completed, and I couldn't help admiring when seeing the final result of the group. During the course, I also had the honor to meet students from different countries and regions and different colleges, and it was very happy to communicate with each other.
I especially agree with the lifelong learning mentioned by the teacher in the closing remarks, and also thank the teacher for the gift of books. I hope I can become a lifelong learner. Even if I move forward slowly step by step, as long as the direction is correct, I will be closer to the end than standing still.
Comments 6: During these two days, I realized again that there are still many fields that I need to explore further. I really appreciate the presentations and ideas of other groups, especially the “Little Whale” of Team B. Their content, slogan, and PPT layout are very complete. They can express their ideas completely in such a short time, which is what I need to learn from them. At the same time, after the teacher commented on our group's report, I also realized that I need to be more comprehensive in the thinking process and consider the impact of more realistic factors.
The sharing of the teacher and the guests gave me more directions to understand the market. Through this course, I will further urge myself to track new technologies and new developments and read the books recommended by the teacher. Innovation is not only for entrepreneurship, but also for thinking about every decision and every moment in life. In this course, the only regret is that I couldn't communicate more directly with the teacher, teammates and other students offline. Online classes lack the interaction between people, and occasionally I couldn't hear the sharing of the teacher, guests or classmates clearly due to network and equipment problems. Here, I also want to thank the other three teammates for their mutual cooperation. Although the atmosphere of the discussion at the beginning was a little awkward, we still completed the report happily afterwards.
Finally, I also thank the teacher for the enthusiastic teaching. I believe that not only me, but also other online students felt your enthusiasm through the computer screen! Thank you.
