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Curriculum-related papers
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The CDIO Syllabus: A comparative study of expected student proficiency. By Johan Bankel, Karl-Fredrik Berggren, Karin Blom, Edward F. Crawley, Sören Östlund, Ingela Wiklund This paper describes a unique international collaboration among four universities to reform engineering education. The collaborators agreed to a statement of goals, which include descriptions of knowledge, skills and attitudes vital to an effective education, and codifies proficiency levels expected of graduates. We developed and utilized unique stakeholder surveys to both validate our prototype and determine desired proficiency levels. The collaboration resulted in The CDIO Syllabus, A Statement of Goals for Undergraduate Engineering Education. The Syllabus is both a template and a process that can be used to customize the syllabus to others’ programs. It can define new educational initiatives, and be employed as the basis for rigorous assessment. This paper details how, with the input of industry, academia and others, the collaborators employed an engineering problem solving paradigm to effect redesign. It outlines the Syllabus and the unique process employed to create it. This paper was published in the European Journal of Engineering Education, Vol.28 No. 3 (2003) and is posted here by permission.
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Creating the CDIO Syllabus: A Universal Template for Engineering Education. By E. F. Crawley This paper details how a team at MIT identified and codified a set of goals for engineering education, which can serve as the basis for curricular improvement and outcome based assessment. The result of two years of scholarship, these goals are embodied in The CDIO Syllabus, A Statement of Goals for Undergraduate Engineering Education. The specific CDIO (Conceive — Design — Implement — Operate) Syllabus objective is to create rational, complete, universal and generalizable goals for undergraduate engineering education. The Syllabus focuses on personal, interpersonal and system building skills, and leaves a placeholder for the disciplinary fundamentals appropriate for any specific field of engineering. It complements and significantly expands on ABET’s criteria. The process of adapting the Syllabus to a degree program includes a survey step to determine the desired level of proficiency in the designated skills that is, by consensus, expected of program’s graduates. With rationale, detail and broad applicability, the CDIO Syllabus’ principal value is that it can be generalized to serve as a model from which any university’s engineering programs may derive specific learning outcomes. Written for presentation to the ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Boston, MA, USA, 06-09 November 2002. Available here through the courtesy of the American Society of Engineering Education.
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Engineering Design and Rapid Prototyping. By Olivier de Weck, Peter Young, Christopher Graff, Aaron Bell, William Nadir, Il Yong Kim  This paper presents the second offering of a new undergraduate design and rapid prototyping course in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. The course combines design theory, lectures, and hands on activities to teach the design stages from conception to implementation and testing. Activities include hand sketching, CAD, CAE, CAM, design optimization, rapid prototyping techniques, and performance testing. The learning objectives, pedagogy, required resources and instructional processes, as well as results from the latest implementation of the course and student assessments are discussed. A review of the previous year’s assessments and a short project description is also included. A key pedagogical insight from this course is that design iterations are not to be interpreted as error correction or rework, but as an essential part of a sound engineering process. This paper was presented at the CDIO Annual Conference, 06-09 June 2005, Kingston, Ontario. They are posted here by permission of the author(s).
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The First Year As Engineering Student: The Experiences of Four Cohorts of Engineering Students in Applied Physics and Electro Technics in Linköping University. By E. Stiwne In this paper comparative data from four cohorts of engineering students´ expectations and experiences during their first study year are presented and discussed. The study is one part of an ongoing longitudinal study. The data from the first cohorts, 1998 and 1999, are base-line data against which data from the latter cohorts, 2000 and 2002, are compared. Comparisons are made in relation to the planning and implementation of a CDIO curriculum from 1999 and on. The results show a changing approach to studying between the first and the latter cohorts, from an achievement and future oriented approach to a gratifying and here- and-now oriented approach. This paper was presented at the CDIO Annual Conference, 06-09 June 2005, Kingston, Ontario. They are posted here by permission of the author(s).
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First-year introductory courses as a means to develop conceive – design – implement – operate skills in engineering education programmes. By G. Gustafsson, D. Newman, S. Stafström and H. P. Wallin This paper presents a part of the ongoing Conceive – Design – Implement – Operate (CDIO) Program for Engineering Education Reform, which is run by Chalmers University of Technology, the Royal Institute of Technology and Linköping University, all in Sweden, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA. In the paper we present and discuss first-year introductory courses in engineering education programmes at the four universities from a CDIO perspective, with an emphasis on the student projects in these courses. Presented the SEFI Annual Conference, Firenze, Italy, 08-11 September 2002
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Mechanical Engineering Curriculum At DTU And The Application Of CDIO In First Year Courses. By Niels Houbak and Peder Klit In the mechanical engineering area the Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Management and the Department of Mechanical Engineering deliver the technical courses for the Bachelor education (called Production and Engineering Design, P&E). In cooperation the two departments gives an introductory ‘Engineering Work’ course with much emphasis on the CDIO philosophy. This course in particular but also the design of the study plan will be described in this paper as will an ongoing effort on evaluating the current curriculum with improvements in mind. This paper was presented at the CDIO Annual Conference, 06-09 June 2005, Kingston, Ontario. They are posted here by permission of the author(s).
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Towards a New Model for First-Year Introductory Courses in Engineering Education Programmes. By G. Gustafsson, J. Malmqvist, D. Newman, S. Stafström and H. P. Wallin An important and common component of engineering programmes is a first-year course aimed at introducing various subjects as well as motivating the students and introducing them to the engineering profession. This paper compares four such courses at Chalmers University of Technology, The Royal Institute of Technology, Linköping University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Discriminators showing details of each course are displayed and possible course development is discussed. Presented at NordDesign, Trondheim, Norway, August 2002
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A Transatlantic Program for Teaching Engineering Ethics. By Göran Collste As part of the CDIO program, teaching modules for ethics, communication and group work have been developed. The author of this paper, together with philosopher Martin Peterson, is responsible for the ethics module, In this paper, Collste discusses the module as part of the CDIO curriculum project. The ethics instructor guide is presented on a web-site. The paper includes a summary of the content of the ethics module, some particular so called “best practices,” and raises some questions for discussion. Presented at the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics annual conference in Cincinnatti, Ohio, USA, 28 February 2004.
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