Teaching - Magnus Löfstrand

Teaching experience

Löfstrands' teaching experience prior to employment at Örebro University includes:

  • 13 years experience from supervising, teaching and coordinating creative product development in industrially applied projects
  • Some 10 years experience from supervising students in introductory and continuation courses in Computer Aided Design
  • Examiner for an undergraduate course regarding theory, processes and methods for engineering product development
  • Developed a environment for distance education and supported teachers who taught three different courses over two years, 2007-2009.

Löfstrand further has supervised three PhD students as assistant supervisor and taught PhD candidates. These teaching related experiences are further explained below.

Undergraduate courses

SIRIUS - Creative product development While employed by CAD@LTU, from 2002 to 2011, Löfstrand was privileged to supervise one or two teams per year in the final-year MSc course, SIRIUS - creative product development, at Luleå University of Technology. Participating in this course was very interesting and stimulating. The product-development projects of this course are firmly based on close collaboration with industrial manufacturers and on real product-development needs. Students go through the entire product-development process from concept to prototype. The supervisor's role is to provide, via various types of assessment, a basis for grading the students, to ensure that students make the expected progress during the project and that they reflect over the product-development process, and thereby gain knowledge of product development and product-development methodology. In this role, I have a lot of contact with students and I am able to foster a positive and collaborative spirit within the team. In 2011, Löfstrand was appointed coordinator of the SIRIUS course, assisting the examiner and running the day-to-day operations, an assignment that continued through June 2013.

Engineering product development While employed by CAD@LTU Löfstrand was the course examiner for a second and third year undergraduate course in Engineering product development. The course constituted an the product development process including needs, requirements, idea generation, modelling and simulation, motivations for project choices, project management, business models, combinations of products and services and IPR.

Computer Aided Design While employed by CAD@LTU, from 2002 to approximately 2010, Löfstrand began formal teaching during autumn 2002, Previously, as a project employee, he had also assisted with CAD courses. The first course taught was in computer-aided design (introductory course in CAD). Subsequently, in a continuation course, Löfstrand assisted with teaching and computer tutorials. Using of commercially available 3D CAD programs (I-DEAS, ProEngineer) students in these courses learn to create solid models and use them to simulate dynamics, stress fields, etc., typically in mechanical engineering applications. Löfstrands' role in these courses was to supervise students in the computer rooms.

Distance education While employed by CAD@LTU, from 2007 to 2009, Löfstrand supported the three teachers who gave a distance course in Vehicle Dynamics for automotive systems engineers in Arvidsjaur and Arjeplog (and for students in Luleå). Löfstrand also assisted the teachers who taught the distance courses in Computer-Aided Design, Rotor Dynamics and Solid Mechanics. Thanks to these distance courses, Löfstrand had the opportunity to develop the use of video-conferencing tools in teaching situations. Löfstrand has published articles on the subject and have thereby been able to integrate teaching with research, and vice versa.

PhD student courses

Löfstrand has as one of four colleagues contributed to the development and teaching of two PhD candidate courses LTU, Division of Product and production development, Computer Aided Design:

  • Functional product development
  • Simulation driven design

PhD student supervision

Löfstrand has supervised three PhD students as assistant supervisor,
Dr. Ahmad Alzghoul, up to and including his dissertation, June 2013
Dr. Petter Kyösti, up to and including Tech. Lic. December 2012.
Mr. Björn Backe, MSc., Tech.Lic., up to Tech.Lic.