CDIO Educational Initiative (Reforming Engineering Education)

The CDIO INITIATIVE is an innovative educational framework for producing the next generation of engineers. It provides students with an education stressing engineering fundamentals set in the context of Conceiving -- Designing -- Implementing -- Operating real-world systems and products.

The CDIO Initiative was developed with input from academics, industry, engineers and students. It is universally adaptable for all engineering schools. CDIO Initiative collaborators throughout the world have adopted CDIO as the framework of their curricular planning and outcome–based assessment.

Throughout much of the 20th century, engineering education programs offered students lots of hands-on practice. Courses were taught by practicing engineers and focused on solving tangible problems. But, as scientific and technical knowledge expanded rapidly during the latter 1900s, engineering education evolved into the teaching of engineering science and de-emphasized engineering practice.

In recent years, industry began to find that graduating students, while technically adept, lacked many abilities required in real world engineering situations. Major companies created lists of abilities they wanted their engineers to possess (e.g. Boeing's Desired Attributes of an Engineer). To encourage schools to meet real world needs and rethink their educational strategies, the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology listed its expectations for graduating engineers. Industry and the accreditation board had identified the destination; now it was up to educators to plan the route. Faced with the gap between scientific and practical engineering demands, we took up the challenge to reform engineering education. The result of this endeavor is the CDIO Initiative.

The CDIO Initiative -- CDIO stands for Conceive — Design — Implement — Operate. CDIO is an innovative educational program for producing the next generation of engineering leaders. It’s being adapted and adopted by a growing number of engineering educational institutions around the world.

Through its concept; its reforms of curriculum, teaching and learning; and its creation of workshop activities and assessment processes, CDIO is resolving the conflict in engineering education — bringing engineering education in line with real-world engineering needs.

The CDIO Initiative was specifically designed as a template that can be adapted and adopted by any university engineering school. Member schools are implementing CDIO in aerospace, mechanical and electrical engineering, and applied physics programs.

CDIO is an open architecture endeavor. It's available to all university engineering programs to adapt to their specific needs. Participating universities are developing materials and approaches to share with others. We’re developing open, accessible channels for the program materials, and for disseminating and exchanging resources.

The CDIO collaborators have assembled a unique development team of curriculum, teaching and learning, assessment, design and build, and communications professionals. They are assisting others to explore adopting CDIO in their institutions. There is a wealth of development material available ranging from model surveys, to assessment tools, to reports from institutions that have implemented CDIO programs.

Workshops/laboratories -- Engineers design and build systems and products. In the CDIO Initiative, workshop and laboratory experiences support the theory-to-practice progression. Experiences in conceiving, designing, implementing and operating are woven into the curriculum. Workshops/ laboratories are key to the CDIO learning environment. They must support a number of the modes of active and hands-on learning including experimentation, social interaction, team building and team activity.

Since conceiving, designing, implementing and operating is the context of education, workshops and lab environments are organized around C, D, I and O. Conceive spaces are largely technology-free zones that encourage interpersonal interaction, and include team and personal spaces conducive to reflection and conceptual development. Facilities introduce students to digitally-enhanced collaborative design, and allow them to implement fabrication and hardware/software integration. It’s challenging to teach operation in an academic setting, but environments can be offered where students operate their own experiments as well as perform faculty-generated class experiments. Simulations of real operations, and digital links to real operations environments supplement experiences.

Assessment -- CDIO is a new and evolving educational reform initiative. It requires continual, thorough assessment to determine what works, what doesn’t, how it can be improved and how it should evolve. In creating CDIO, we included an assessment process, which evaluates individual student learning and faculty teaching as well as the overall impact of the CDIO Initiative.

Assessment procedures allow evaluation of representative sets of the nearly 80 attributes identified in the CDIO Syllabus as important for graduating engineers. Students are responsible for self and peer assessment. Attitudinal change as well as skill progression are assessed. Many of the tools used to assess performance of individuals and the program are adopted from those of other professions that embrace creativity, design and entrepreneurship. These tools include portfolios and design reviews.

In addition to assessing teaching and learning performance, we assess other aspects of the CDIO Initiative; from curricular change to the impact of purpose-designed facilities. Indeed, students, faculty and staff continually monitor and adjust the program on a multitude of planes.