What is it?

Idea

•  A new kind of project course with a holistic focus on packaging design. Pilot 2012.

•  Based on an interdisciplinary approach combining design, business and engineering thinking to project work from the very beginning.

•  Students learn packaging design in interdisciplinary teams by doing real projects for external clients / packaging industry.

•  Students play an active and investigative role as learners.

How did it happen?

Starting point: identifying packaging related areas of education in Aalto and co-designing a new platform and approach to teach holistic packaging design.

6 Te

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Interdisciplinary Student Teams

Interdisciplinary Teamwork

•  24 motivated students are selected to the course based on evaluating written applications (in 2013).

•  4 Project teams with 6 skilled individuals from various backgrounds.

•  Teams are created prior to course start by matching skills, interests and backgrounds to functional entities.

•  Problem & Project based learning (PBL) as a learning method, supported by a variety of theme lectures and workshops.

Motivation + Time + Competence

Collective intelligence

+

Co-Design

Course goal for students

•  To learn professional working practices in interdisciplinary project teams. Every student works responsibly as a part of a team.

•  To understand how different team roles and responsibilities contribute to the project work. To learn how to use student’s own background, skills and knowledge as an asset for interdisciplinary team work.

•  To understand the systemic connections from packaging to consumption, material flow and sustainability. To understand the impact and possibilities of packaging design as a change initiator.

14.3.2013 Pack-Age Project

Markus Joutsela

Markus Joutsela

Kai Rentola

Jouni Paltakari

Sanna Heiniö

Tarja Toikka

Noora Nylander

+ guests

Teaching Collaboration 2013

Benefits to all parties

•  Students get a broad perspective of topical packaging design knowledge and learn how to work responsibly as a part of an interdisciplinary design team and manage projects.

•  Aalto professors, teachers and researchers collaborate in creating dynamic learning system and interesting content and workshops based on the latest knowledge. The course practicalities and offerings are actively developed in collaboration with the staff.

•  Participating companies benefit by getting valuable, novel and different packaging ideas & solutions that work from many angles.

What happens during the course?

Mapping Packaging Design Related Areas in Aalto University

Mapping Packaging Design Related Areas in Aalto University

Mapping Packaging Design Related Areas in Aalto University

Growing as a team

is more than a buffet of nice lectures and workshops:

it’s a genuine learning experience for all parties involved.

https://blogs.aalto.fi/package/about/