Dr. Dan Cuperman
In this study, engineering students stepped into the world of design as it is practiced in modern Industry 4.0 environments: collaborative, cloud-based, and constantly evolving. Working together in a digital design space rather than around a single computer, student teams used a cloud-based CAD platform to co-design, revise, and manufacture functional prototypes, watching their ideas evolve through multiple design-to-print cycles. Every change, discussion, and design decision left a digital trace, allowing the researchers to observe how collaboration actually unfolds when design moves to the cloud. The experience showed students that engineering design is no longer a solitary activity but a shared, data-rich process, where creativity, communication, and rapid iteration matter as much as technical skill. By blending hands-on fabrication with cloud-based collaboration, the study highlights how future engineers can learn to design not just better objects, but better ways of working together.
