Discovering curriculum components for a new product development course: A latent semantic approach

Presently, new product development is deemed the core activity of an organization’s competitive strategy, but there is a surprising dearth of research on what curriculum components should be embedded in the new product development course. This study aims to introduce a methodology that can carry out curriculum design with limited prior knowledge. First, latent semantic analysis is applied to extract the main research themes from the subject matter literature, which are considered as potential curriculum components. Next, the revised Bloom’s taxonomy is applied to develop a questionnaire for establishing the learning objectives. Finally, the study uses the modified Delphi method to verify the eligibility of these curriculum components, concluding that the most effective approach for imparting knowledge and skills regarding new product development is to adopt a capstone course and equip students with creativity and advanced technology and design for sustainability through a project-based learning approach.