Doris R. Brodeur’s research while affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other places

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. •Provides an overview of the CDIO approach, then chapters organized according to the CDIO Standards; •Includes in each chapter objectives, discussion questions, case studies and clear diagrams to support key concepts and processes; •Avoids the jargon of education specialists and clearly explains education terms in the context of their initial presentation.

The last three chapters have discussed answers to the second of the two questions central to the reform of engineering education: How can we do better at ensuring that students learn these skills? Integrated curriculum, design-implement experiences, integrated learning, and active and experiential learning are the main components of a reformed engineering education that better ensures that students reach the intended outcomes required of all engineering graduates.

In this chapter, we continue our discussion of the resolution of the second question central to the improvement of engineering education—How can we do better at ensuring that students learn these skills? In Chap. 4, we examined how the curriculum can be restructured and re-tasked in order to strengthen the links between the disciplines and weave the necessary skills into the curriculum plan. In this chapter, we examine perhaps the most important device to meet the demands placed on an integrated engineering curriculum, namely, design-implement experiences.

The CDIO approach responds in an integrated and pragmatic way to the historical context in which engineering education finds itself and to the challenges that lie in the future. We call the collaboration of universities with at least one engineering program that has adopted a CDIO approach to engineering education the CDIO Initiative. The collaboration began with four universities in two countries and has expanded rapidly in terms of scope and participating universities. The initial programs were typically within the domains of mechanical, vehicular and electronic engineering, but the CDIO approach has now been implemented in programs in chemical engineering, material science and engineering, and bioengineering.

The purpose of engineering education is to provide the learning required by students to become successful engineers—technical expertise, social awareness, and a bias toward innovation. This combined set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes is essential to strengthening productivity, entrepreneurship, and excellence in an environment that is increasingly based on technologically complex and sustainable products, processes, and systems. It is imperative that we improve the quality and nature of undergraduate engineering education.

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.

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.

Modern engineering education programs seek to impart to the students a broad base of knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to become successful young engineers. This array of abilities is represented in the CDIO Syllabus, an attempt to create a rational, complete, consistent, and generalizable set of goals for undergraduate engineering education. This paper examines the content and structure of the Syllabus, as well as the roles played by the Syllabus in the design and operation of educational programs. The paper begins by examining the content and structure of the Syllabus, and then contrasts the Syllabus with other important taxonomies of educational outcomes. The CDIO Syllabus is first compared with the UNESCO Four Pillars of Learning, with which if is aligned at a high level. The Syllabus is then compared with national accreditation and evaluation standards of several nations. The finding is that the CDIO Syllabus is consistent and more detailed and comprehensive than any of the individual standards.