CDIO Syllabus in Topical Form

1 TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE AND REASONING

1.1 KNOWLEDGE OF UNDERLYING SCIENCES [a]

1.1.1 Mathematics (including statistics)

1.1.2 Physics

1.1.3 Chemistry

1.1.4 Biology

1.2 CORE ENGINEERING FUNDAMENTAL KNOWLEDGE [a]

1.3 ADVANCED ENGINEERING FUNDAMENTAL KNOWLEDGE [k]

2 PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS AND ATTRIBUTES

2.1 ENGINEERING REASONING AND PROBLEM SOLVING [e]

2.1.1 Problem Identification and Formulation

  • Data and symptoms
  • Assumptions and sources of bias
  • Issue prioritization in context of overall goals
  • A plan of attack (incorporating model, analytical and numerical solutions, qualitative analysis, experimentation and consideration of uncertainty)

2.1.2 Modeling

  • Assumptions to simplify complex systems and environment
  • Conceptual and qualitative models
  • Quantitative models and simulations

2.1.3 Estimation and Qualitative Analysis

  • Orders of magnitude, bounds and trends
  • Tests for consistency and errors (limits, units, etc.)
  • The generalization of analytical solutions

2.1.4 Analysis With Uncertainty

  • Incomplete and ambiguous information
  • Probabilistic and statistical models of events and sequences
  • Engineering cost-benefit and risk analysis
  • Decision analysis
  • Margins and reserves

2.1.5 Solution and Recommendation

  • Problem solutions
  • Essential results of solutions and test data
  • Discrepancies in results
  • Summary recommendations
  • Possible improvements in the problem solving process

2.2 EXPERIMENTATION AND KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY [b]

2.2.1 Hypothesis Formulation

  • Critical questions to be examined
  • Hypotheses to be tested
  • Controls and control groups

2.2.2 Survey of Print and Electronic Literature

  • The literature research strategy
  • Information search and identification using library tools (on-line catalogs, databases, search engines)
  • Sorting and classifying the primary information
  • The quality and reliability of information
  • The essentials and innovations contained in the information
  • Research questions that are unanswered
  • Citations to references

2.2.3 Experimental Inquiry

  • The experimental concept and strategy
  • The precautions when humans are used in experiments
  • Experiment construction
  • Test protocols and experimental procedures
  • Experimental measurements
  • Experimental data
  • Experimental data vs. available models

2.2.4 Hypothesis Test, and Defense

  • The statistical validity of data
  • The limitations of data employed
  • Conclusions, supported by data, needs and values
  • Possible improvements in knowledge discovery process

2.3 SYSTEM THINKING

2.3.1 Thinking Holistically

  • A system, its behavior, and its elements
  • Trans-disciplinary approaches that ensure the system is understood from all relevant perspectives
  • The societal, enterprise and technical context of the system
  • The interactions external to the system, and the behavioral impact of the system

2.3.2 Emergence and Interactions in Systems

  • The abstractions necessary to define and model system
  • The behavioral and functional properties (intended and unintended) which emerge from the system
  • The important interfaces among elements
  • Evolutionary adaptation over time

2.3.3 Prioritization and Focus

  • All factors relevant to the system in the whole
  • The driving factors from among the whole
  • Energy and resource allocations to resolve the driving issues

2.3.4 Trade-offs, Judgement and Balance in Resolution

  • Tensions and factors to resolve through trade-offs
  • Solutions that balance various factors, resolve tensions and optimize the system as a whole
  • Flexible vs. optimal solutions over the system lifetime
  • Possible improvements in the system thinking used

2.4 PERSONAL SKILLS AND ATTITUDES

2.4.1 Initiative and Willingness to Take Risks

  • The needs and opportunities for initiative
  • The potential benefits and risks of an action
  • The methods and timing of project initiation
  • Leadership in new endeavors, with a bias for appropriate action
  • Definitive action, delivery of results and reporting on actions

2.4.2 Perseverance and Flexibility

  • Self-confidence, enthusiasm, and passion
  • The importance of hard work, intensity and attention to detail
  • Adaptation to change
  • A willingness and ability to work independently
  • A willingness to work with others, and to consider and embrace various viewpoints
  • An acceptance of criticism and positive response
  • The balance between personal and professional life

2.4.3 Creative Thinking

  • Conceptualization and abstraction
  • Synthesis and generalization
  • The process of invention
  • The role of creativity in art, science, the humanities and technology

2.4.4 Critical Thinking

  • The statement of the problem
  • Logical arguments and solutions
  • Supporting evidence
  • Contradictory perspectives, theories and facts
  • Logical fallacies
  • Hypotheses and conclusions

2.4.5 Awareness of OneÕs Personal Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes

  • One's skills, interests, strengths, weaknesses
  • The extent of one's abilities, and one's responsibility for self-improvement to overcome important weaknesses
  • The importance of both depth and breadth of knowledge

2.4.6 Curiosity and Lifelong Learning [ i ]

  • The motivation for continued self-education
  • The skills of self-education
  • One's own learning style
  • Developing relationships with mentors

2.4.7 Time and Resource Management

  • Task prioritization
  • The importance and/or urgency of tasks
  • Efficient execution of tasks

2.5 PROFESSIONAL SKILLS AND ATTITUDES

2.5.1 Professional Ethics, Integrity, Responsibility and Accountability [f]

  • One's ethical standards and principles
  • The courage to act on principle despite adversity
  • The possibility of conflict between professionally ethical imperatives
  • An understanding that it is acceptable to make mistakes, but that one must be accountable for them
  • Proper allocation of credit to collaborators
  • A commitment to service

2.5.2 Professional Behavior

  • A professional bearing
  • Professional courtesy
  • International customs and norms of interpersonal contact

2.5.3 Proactively Planning for OneÕs Career

  • A personal vision for oneÕs future
  • Networks with professionals
  • One's portfolio of professional skills

2.5.4 Staying Current on World of Engineer

  • The potential impact of new scientific discoveries
  • The social and technical impact of new technologies and innovations
  • A familiarity with current practices/technology in engineering
  • The links between engineering theory and practice

3 INTERPERSONAL SKILLS: TEAMWORK AND COMMUNICATION

3.1 TEAMWORK [d]

3.1.1 Forming Effective Teams

  • The stages of team formation and life cycle
  • Task and team processes
  • Team roles and responsibilities
  • The goals, needs and characteristics (works styles, cultural differences) of individual team members
  • The strengths and weakness of the team
  • Ground rules on norms of team confidentiality, accountability and initiative

3.1.2 Team Operation

  • Goals and agenda
  • The planning and facilitation of effective meetings
  • Team ground rules
  • Effective communication (active listening, collaboration, providing and obtaining information)
  • Positive and effective feedback
  • The planning, scheduling and execution of a project
  • Solutions to problems (team creativity and decision making)
  • Conflict negotiation and resolution

3.1.3 Team Growth and Evolution

  • Strategies for reflection, assessment, and self-assessment
  • Skills for team maintenance and growth
  • Skills for individual growth within the team
  • Strategies for team communication and writing

3.1.4 Leadership

  • Team goals and objectives
  • Team process management
  • Leadership and facilitation styles (directing, coaching, supporting, delegating)
  • Approaches to motivation (incentives, example, recognition, etc)
  • Representing the team to others
  • Mentoring and counseling

3.1.5 Technical Teaming

  • Working in different types of teams :
  • Cross-disciplinary teams (including non-engineer)
  • Small team vs. large team
  • Distance, distributed and electronic environments
  • Technical collaboration with team members

3.2 COMMUNICATIONS [g]

3.2.1 Communications Strategy

  • The communication situation
  • Communications objectives
  • The needs and character of the audience
  • The communication context
  • A communications strategy
  • The appropriate combination of media
  • A communication style (proposing, reviewing, collaborating, documenting, teaching)
  • The content and organization

3.2.2 Communications Structure

  • Logical, persuasive arguments
  • The appropriate structure and relationship amongst ideas
  • Relevant, credible, accurate supporting evidence
  • Conciseness, crispness, precision and clarity of language
  • Rhetorical factors (e.g. audience bias)
  • Cross-disciplinary cross-cultural communications

3.2.3 Written Communication

  • Writing with coherence and flow
  • Writing with correct spelling, punctuation and grammar
  • Formatting the document
  • Technical writing
  • Various written styles (informal, formal memos, reports, etc)

3.2.4 Electronic/Multimedia Communication

  • Preparing electronic presentations
  • The norms associated with the use of e-mail, voice mail, and videoconferencing
  • Various electronic styles (charts, web, etc)

3.2.5 Graphical Communication

  • Sketching and drawing
  • Construction of tables, graphs and charts
  • Formal technical drawings and renderings

3.2.6 Oral Presentation and Inter-Personal Communications

  • Preparing presentations and supporting media with appropriate language, style, timing and flow
  • Appropriate nonverbal communications (gestures, eye contact, poise)
  • Answering questions effectively

3.3 COMMUNICATIONS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES

3.3.1 English

3.3.2 Languages of Regional Industrialized Nations

3.3.3 Other Languages

4 CONCEIVING, DESIGNING, IMPLEMENTING AND OPERATING SYSTEMS IN THE ENTERPRISE AND SOCIETAL CONTEXT

4.1 EXTERNAL AND SOCIETAL CONTEXT [h]

4.1.1 Roles and Responsibility of Engineers

  • The goals and roles of the engineering profession
  • The responsibilities of engineers to society

4.1.2 The Impact of Engineering on Society

  • The impact of engineering on the environment, social, knowledge and economic systems in modern culture

4.1.3 Society's Regulation of Engineering

  • The role of society and its agents to regulate engineering
  • The way in which legal and political systems regulate and influence engineering
  • How professional societies license and set standards
  • How intellectual property is created, utilized and defended

4.1.4 The Historical and Cultural Context

  • The diverse nature and history of human societies as well as their literary, philosophical, and artistic traditions
  • The discourse and analysis appropriate to the discussion of language, thought and values

4.1.5 Contemporary Issues and Values [j]

  • The important contemporary political, social, legal and environmental issues and values
  • The process by which contemporary values are set, and oneÕs role in these processes
  • The mechanisms for expansion and diffusion of knowledge

4.1.6 Developing a Global Perspective

  • The internationalization of human activity
  • The similarities and differences in the political, social, economic, business and technical norms of various cultures
  • International inter-enterprise and inter-governmental agreements and alliances

4.2 ENTERPRISE AND BUSINESS CONTEXT

4.2.1 Appreciating Different Enterprise Cultures

  • The differences in process, culture, and metrics of success in various enterprise cultures:
  • Corporate vs. academic vs. governmental vs. non-profit/NGO
  • Market vs. policy driven
  • Large vs. small
  • Centralized vs. distributed
  • Research and development vs. operations
  • Mature vs. growth phase vs. entrepreneurial
  • Longer vs. faster development cycles
  • With vs. without the participation of organized labor

4.2.2 Enterprise Strategy, Goals, and Planning

  • The mission and scope of the enterprise
  • An enterpriseÕs core competence and markets
  • The research and technology process
  • Key alliances and supplier relations
  • Financial and managerial goals and metrics
  • Financial planning and control
  • The stake-holders (owners, employees, customers, etc.)

4.2.3 Technical Entrepreneurship

  • Entrepreneurial opportunities that can be addressed by technology
  • Technologies that can create new products and systems
  • Entrepreneurial finance and organization

4.2.4 Working Successfully in Organizations

  • The function of management
  • Various roles and responsibilities in an organization
  • The roles of functional and program organizations
  • Working effectively within hierarchy and organizations
  • Change, dynamics and evolution in organizations

4.3 CONCEIVING AND ENGINEERING SYSTEMS [c]

4.3.1 Setting System Goals and Requirements

  • Market needs and opportunities
  • Customer needs
  • Opportunities which derive from new technology or latent needs
  • Factors that set the context of the requirements
  • Enterprise goals, strategies, capabilities and alliances
  • Competitors and benchmarking information
  • Ethical, social, environmental, legal and regulatory influences
  • The probability of change in the factors that influence the system, its goals and resources available
  • System goals and requirements
  • The language/format of goals and requirements
  • Initial target goals (based on needs, opportunities and other influences)
  • System performance metrics
  • Requirement completeness and consistency

4.3.2 Defining Function, Concept and Architecture

  • Necessary system functions (and behavioral specifications)
  • System concepts
  • The appropriate level of technology
  • Trade-offs among and recombination of concepts
  • High level architectural form and structure
  • The decomposition of form into elements, assignment of function to elements, and definition of interfaces

4.3.3 Modeling of System and Ensuring Goals Can Be Met

  • Appropriate models of technical performance
  • The concept of implementation and operations
  • Life cycle value and costs (design, implementation, operations, opportunity, etc.)
  • Trade-offs among various goals, function, concept and structure and iteration until convergence

4.3.4 Development Project Management

  • Project control for cost, performance, and schedule
  • Appropriate transition points and reviews
  • Configuration management and documentation
  • Performance compared to baseline
  • Earned value recognition
  • The estimation and allocation of resources
  • Risks and alternatives
  • Possible development process improvements

4.4 DESIGNING [c]

4.4.1 The Design Process

  • Requirements for each element or component derived from system level goals and requirements
  • Alternatives in design
  • The initial design
  • Experiment prototypes and test articles in design development
  • Appropriate optimization in the presence of constraints
  • Iteration until convergence
  • The final design
  • Accommodation of changing requirements

4.4.2 The Design Process Phasing and Approaches

  • The activities in the phases of system design (e.g. conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design)
  • Process models appropriate for particular development projects (waterfall, spiral, concurrent, etc.)
  • The process for single, platform and derivative products

4.4.3 Utilization of Knowledge in Design

  • Technical and scientific knowledge
  • Creative and critical thinking, and problem solving
  • Prior work in the field, standardization and reuse of designs (including reverse engineer and redesign)
  • Design knowledge capture

4.4.4 Disciplinary Design

  • Appropriate techniques, tools, and processes
  • Design tool calibration and validation
  • Quantitative analysis of alternatives
  • Modeling, simulation and test
  • Analytical refinement of the design

4.4.5 Multidisciplinary Design

  • Interactions between disciplines
  • Dissimilar conventions and assumptions
  • Differences in the maturity of disciplinary models
  • Multidisciplinary design environments
  • Multidisciplinary design

4.4.6 Multi-Objective Design (DFX)

Design for:

  • Performance, life cycle cost and value
  • Aesthetics and human factors
  • Implementation, verification, test and environmental sustainability
  • Operations
  • Maintainability, reliability, and safety
  • Robustness, evolution, product improvement and retirement

4.5 IMPLEMENTING [c]

4.5.1 Designing the Implementation Process

  • The goals and metrics for implementation performance, cost and quality
  • The implementation system design:
  • Task allocation and cell/unit layout
  • Work flow
  • Considerations for human user/operators

4.5.2 Hardware Manufacturing Process

  • The manufacturing of parts
  • The assembly of parts into larger constructs
  • Tolerances, variability, key characteristics and statistical process control

4.5.3 Software Implementing Process

  • The break down of high level components into module designs (including algorithms and data structures)
  • Algorithms (data structures, control flow, data flow)
  • The programming language
  • The low-level design (coding)
  • The system build

4.5.4 Hardware Software Integration

  • The integration of software in electronic hardware (size of processor, communications, etc)
  • The integration of software with sensor, actuators and mechanical hardware
  • Hardware/software function and safety

4.5.5 Test, Verification, Validation, and Certification

  • Test and analysis procedures (hardware vs. software, acceptance vs. qualification)
  • The verification of performance to system requirements
  • The validation of performance to customer needs
  • The certification to standards

4.5.6 Implementation Management

  • The organization and structure for implementation
  • Sourcing, partnering, and supply chains
  • Control of implementation cost, performance and schedule
  • Quality and safety assurance
  • Possible implementation process improvements

4.6 OPERATING [c]

4.6.1 Designing and Optimizing Operations

  • The goals and metrics for operational performance, cost, and value
  • Operations process architecture and development
  • Operations (and mission) analysis and modeling

4.6.2 Training and Operations

  • Training for professional operations:
  • Simulation
  • Instruction and programs
  • Procedures
  • Education for consumer operation
  • Operations processes
  • Operations process interactions

4.6.3 Supporting the System Lifecycle

  • Maintenance and logistics
  • Lifecycle performance and reliability
  • Lifecycle value and costs
  • Feedback to facilitate system improvement

4.6.4 System Improvement and Evolution

  • Pre-planned product improvement
  • Improvements based on needs observed in operation
  • Evolutionary system upgrades
  • Contingency improvements/solutions resulting from operational necessity

4.6.5 Disposal and Life-End Issues

  • The end of useful life
  • Disposal options
  • Residual value at life-end
  • Environmental considerations for disposal

4.6.6 Operations Management

  • The organization and structure for operations
  • Partnerships and alliances
  • Control of operations cost, performance and scheduling
  • Quality and safety assurance
  • Possible operations process improvements
  • Life cycle management