Educating Future Product Developers in Virtual Collaboration: Five Years of the E-GPR Course

Abstract

Integrated product development is a set of complex activities and its level of difficulty is additionally increased by the ever-changing business environment, primarily by functional associating of geographically dispersed human resources. The key resources for development are product developers, but it is questionable whether the existing systems are appropriate for the education of such professionals. The chapter describes the European Global Product Realization (E-GPR) course program and reflections from the perspective of participating students and company representatives. To investigate the longterm effects of the course, a survey was conducted on all present and former students, and company representatives. Students, lecturers, instructors, and company representatives all have high praise for the course, believing the acquired knowledge and experience to be invaluable for future members of product development teams.