Kristina Edström

Rethinking Engineering Education

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2007, 2014. This book describes an approach to engineering education that integrates a comprehensive set of personal, interpersonal, and professional engineering skills with engineering disciplinary knowledge in order to prepare innovative and entrepreneurial engineers. The education of engineers is set in the context of engineering practice, that is, Conceiving, Designing, Implementing, and Operating (CDIO) through the entire lifecycle of engineering processes, products, and systems. The book is both a description of the development and implementation of the CDIO model and a guide to engineering programs worldwide that seek to improve the education of young engineers.

Doing course evaluation as if learning matters most

This paper investigates barriers for using course evaluation as a tool for improving student learning, through the analysis of course evaluation practices at The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), a technical university in Stockholm. Although there is a policy on development‐focused course evaluation at KTH, several stakeholders have expressed dissatisfaction with its poor results. Interviews were conducted with faculty and student representatives to investigate the perceived purpose and focus of evaluation and its current utilization. Results show that evaluation is teaching‐ and teacher‐focused. As course development is not in the foreground, evaluations merely have a fire alarm function. It is argued that course evaluation should be regarded as a component of constructive alignment, together with the intended learning outcomes, learning activities and assessment. Finally, the concept system alignment is proposed, extending constructive alignment to the institutional level. The evaluation task can generally be said to be: 1. to describe what actually happens in that which seems to happen 2. to tell why precisely this happens, and 3. to state the possibilities for something else to happen.   (Franke‐Wikberg & Lundgren, 1980, p. 148)

PBL and CDIO : complementary models for engineering education development

This paper compares two models for reforming engineering education, problem/project-based learning (PBL), and conceive–design–implement–operate (CDIO), identifying and explaining similarities and differences. PBL and CDIO are defined and contrasted in terms of their history, community, definitions, curriculum design, relation to disciplines, engineering projects, and change strategy. The structured comparison is intended as an introduction for learning about any of these models. It also invites reflection to support the understanding and evolution of PBL and CDIO, and indicates specifically what the communities can learn from each other. It is noted that while the two approaches share many underlying values, they only partially overlap as strategies for educational reform. The conclusions are that practitioners have much to learn from each others experiences through a dialogue between the communities, and that PBL and CDIO can play compatible and mutually reinforcing roles, and thus can be fruitfully combined to reform engineering education.

Rethinking engineering education - The CDIO approach, 2nd ed

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2007, 2014. This book describes an approach to engineering education that integrates a comprehensive set of personal, interpersonal, and professional engineering skills with engineering disciplinary knowledge in order to prepare innovative and entrepreneurial engineers. The education of engineers is set in the context of engineering practice, that is, Conceiving, Designing, Implementing, and Operating (CDIO) through the entire lifecycle of engineering processes, products, and systems. The book is both a description of the development and implementation of the CDIO model and a guide to engineering programs worldwide that seek to improve the education of young engineers.

Integrated Curriculum Design

We have now reached a transition point in our discussion. In Chap. 2, we posed the two central questions that any approach to improving engineering education must address

The CDIO Approach

The objective of engineering education is to educate students who are “ready to engineer,” that is, broadly prepared with both pre-professional engineering skills and deep knowledge of the technical fundamentals. It is the task of engineering educators to continuously improve the quality of undergraduate engineering education in order to meet this objective. Over the past 30 years, many in industry and government have tried to describe these desired outcomes in terms of attributes of engineering graduates. By examining these views, we identified an underlying need: to educate students to understand how to Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate complex value-added engineering products, processes and systems in a modern, team-based environment.

Improving Quality Assurance with CDIO Self-Evaluation: Experiences From a Nordic Project

The main goal of the Nordic project Quality Assurance in Higher Education was to develop and implement a self-evaluation model in the participating Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) to support their quality assurance work and continuous curriculum development. Furthermore, the project aimed at strengthening the cooperation of HEIs in quality assurance (QA) and disseminating good practices of QA. The framework of development is based on the CDIO approach and the CDIO self-evaluation process. The main results are a detailed definition of the self-evaluation process, well-documented self-evaluations of the participating degree programmes, and the identification of the main development areas and actions in each participating degree programme. Furthermore, the project has increased the partners’ understanding of other partners and their challenges. Finally, quality assurance has been enhanced in each participating programme and new ideas and support for quality assurance work in other higher education institutes have been produced. DOI: 10.4018/ijqaete.2012040106 56 International Journal of Quality Assurance in Engineering and Technology Education, 2(2), 55-66, April-June 2012 Copyright

QUALITY ASSURANCE WITH CDIO SELF-EVALUATION - FIRST RESULTS OF A NORDIC PROJECT

This paper describes the Nordic project „Quality Assurance in Higher Education‟. The main goal of the project is to develop and implement a self-evaluation model in the participating Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to support their quality assurance work and continuous curriculum development in the field of engineering. Furthermore, the project aims at developing cross-evaluation methods for international use as well as strengthening the cooperation of HEIs in quality assurance and disseminating good practices of QA. The framework of development in this project is based on the CDIO initiative and the CDIO selfevaluation model. The project started in October 2009 and will continue until the end of October 2011. The project is divided into two phases. The first phase focused on selfevaluation and the second will focus on cross-evaluation. This paper describes the first project phase. The main results are a detailed definition of the self-evaluation process, welldocumented self-evaluations of the participating degree programmes, as well as identification of main development areas and actions in each participating degree programme. The development actions included, for example, a) implementing a capstone project into the curriculum, b) practical training – improving the connection between the industry and a HEI, c) integration of teaching activities – CDIO awareness, and d) programme organization – programme management team including student representatives. Furthermore, the project has increased the partners‟ understanding of other partners and their challenges. Finally, the quality assurance has been enhanced in each participating programme. Hopefully, this project will provide new ideas and support for quality assurance work on other higher education institutes.

Adapting and Implementing a CDIO Approach

Adapting and implementing a CDIO approach can be of great value to educational programs and the students they serve. However, that means change—an inherently challenging endeavor, especially at a university. Program leaders are more likely to succeed in this change process if faculty are equipped with an understanding of how to bring about change and provided with relevant guidance and resources.

Design for Motivation

Motivation is maybe the most important factor for learning. When we manage to connect to students’ motivation, their energy will work with the learning, instead of against it. In flexible courses, where students study more independently than in traditional courses, we need to give extra attention to how to stimulate and keep students’ motivation.