What's the purpose of an education in sketching in hardware / physical computing?

What should the outcomes of such an education be?

What are employers looking for?

What are some good assignments for exercises and for longer projects?

What's a good structure and format for a class?

What's the right balance between individual and team work?

How much emphasis should be placed on learning skills versus creating interesting concepts?

What specific skills do people need to learn?  What else?

How do we incorporate knowledge about previous works into a class?  Should we attempt to inculcate students in a tradition?

Are we teaching students to innovate or to craft interactions?

How much time to spend lecturing?  

What about good ideas with no technology or little technology?

How can we encourage students to prototype more quickly and more frequently?

How do we work with specific human contexts?

How can we test our prototypes in someone's daily life?

How should students reflect on the work they've done?

Is this a discipline?  Does it make sense as an independent field of study?