1. TO ENGINEERING EDUCATION: 2. Designing An Integrated Curriculum
THE CDIO APPROACH
TO ENGINEERING EDUCATION:
2. Designing An Integrated Curriculum
November 2007
Refer to “Rethinking Engineering Education”, Chapter 4.
Be sure to introduce yourself, and give participants your address.

2. SESSION TWO INTRODUCTION IMPLEMENTATION WHY WHAT HOW HOW WELL CDIO
AS THE CONTEXT
THE CDIO SYLLABUS
WHY
WHAT
PRO-GRAM
EVALU-ATION
INTEGRATED
CURRICULUM
LEARNING
DESIGN-IMPLEMENT
EXPERIENCES
HOW
ASSESSMENT
Refer to “Rethinking Engineering Education”, Chapter 4.
The focus of this session is not on curriculum “development”, but on the “integration” ofpersonal, interpersonal, product, process, and system building skills into the curriculum.
WORKSPACES
INTRO TO ENGINEERING
HOW
WELL
FACULTY
COMPETENCE
IMPLEMENTATION

3. SESSION TWO OBJECTIVES
Explain the rationale for
an integrated curriculum
Plan ways to benchmark
an existing curriculum
Describe the process for
designing and implementing
an integrated curriculum

4. THE CURRICULUM DESIGN PROCESS
The highlighted (yellow) shapes are the focus of this session. Briefly explain the parts of the diagram as an advance organizer of what follows in this session.
Session 1 concludes with stakeholder surveys that identify the program goals and objectives. The next step is to transform the goals and objectives into intended , based on the CDIO Syllabus, are included in the Handbook.
Refer to “Rethinking Engineering Education”, p. 53.

5. ENGINEERING SKILLS
In addition to acquiring disciplinary technical knowledge, students must learn how to express and apply that technical knowledge
Personal, interpersonal, product, process, and system building skills are inseparable from applications of technical knowledge, and must be learned and assessed in technical contexts
Therefore, technical communication skills, teamwork, problem solving, professional ethics, etc. ARE engineering skills
EXAMPLE
Communication in engineering means being able to
Use technical concepts comfortably
Discuss a problem of different levels
Determine what is relevant to the situation
Argue for or against conceptual ideas and solutions
Develop ideas through discussion and collaborative sketching
Explain technical matters to different audiences
Show confidence in expressing oneself within the field
The same kind of list could be made for teamwork, problem solving, professional ethics, and other engineering skills.

6. FACULTY PERCEPTIONS OF GENERIC SKILLS
FACULTY PERCEPTIONS OF SKILLS
PLACE IN CURRICULUM
FACULTY PERCEPTIONS OF GENERIC SKILLS
Integral
They are integral to disciplinary knowledge, infusing and ENABLING scholarly learning and knowledge.
Application
They let students use or apply disciplinary knowledge, thus potentially changing and TRANSLATING disciplinary knowledge through its application. Skills are closely related to disciplinary learning outcomes.
Associated
They are useful additional skills that COMPLEMENT disciplinary knowledge. They are part of the university syllabus, but separate and secondary to disciplinary knowledge.
Not part of curriculum
They are necessary basic PRECURSOR skills and abilities. They may need remedial teaching at university.
Based on the work of Simon Barrie at the University of Sydney, Australia. The full citation is found in the list of references at the end of the Handbook.
Refer to “Rethinking Engineering Education,”, pp
The purpose is to get participants to acknowledge their own views of the place and importance of personal, interpersonal, and product, process, and system building skills in the curriculum.
You might suggest that participants record their perceptions BEFORE they began curriculum reform efforts, and AFTER they had been working on curriculum development for a while. This will prepare them for the following activity.
(Barrie, 2004)

7. ACTIVITY: PAIR-AND-SHARE
Using Barrie’s categories of faculty perceptions, discuss your own perception of the part that personal, interpersonal, and product, process, and system building skills play in the curriculum.
What are the perceptions of the majority of your colleagues in your program?
How do they compare with your partner’s ideas?
Form pairs, by having participants turn to the person seated nearest to them. (also called, “Turn-to-Your-Partner”)
Allow 10 minutes for sharing.
If it seems appropriate, call for a show of hands of how many “fit” into each of Barrie’s categories. To make it less personal, ask them to indicate where most people in their department or program “fit”.

8. WHY INTEGRATE CONTENT AND SKILLS?
Pedagogical Reasons
Competence in personal and interpersonal skills depends on the context in which they are taught and assessed
Engineering fundamentals are learned more deeply by learning related skills
Faculty serve as role models when they demonstrate their own competence in skill areas
Practical Reasons
We can make dual use of available time and resources to be more efficient
We can capitalize on the synergy of the simultaneous learning of skills and disciplinary content to be more effective
Refer to “Rethinking Engineering Education”, pp
Make the point that you first need a well-designed curriculum before you can integrate engineering skills with disciplinary content.

9. CDIO Standard 3 -- Integrated Curriculum
BEST PRACTICE
CDIO Standard 3 -- Integrated Curriculum
A curriculum designed with mutually supporting disciplinary courses, with an explicit plan to integrate personal, interpersonal, and product, process, and system building skills
Disciplinary courses or modules make explicit connections among related and supporting content and learning outcomes
Explicit plan identifies ways in which the integration of engineering skills and multidisciplinary connections are to be made
Give participants time to read CDIO Standard Three in the Handbook, and formulate a few questions.
You might ask them to write questions on separate Post-It notes, and “post” them at the edge of their tables. When their questions have been answered, they remove the Post-It. At the end of the session, unanswered questions are collected or moved to the Parking Lot. (See Session One notes for a description of the Parking Lot.)
If the Parking Lot was not introduced earlier, you may want to do so now.
You might ask them to read CDIO Standard Four to make the connections when curriculum sequence is discussed.

10. CURRICULUM BENCHMARKING
Benchmarking means marking a known position for later reference and comparison. These comparisons can be made across time or across groups at one or more points in time. They may be internal or external to the program.
Benchmarking Methods
Interviews
Focus groups
Written questionnaires or surveys
Comparative studies with peer institutions
Examination of “best practice” programs
Review of published data on performance

11. BENCHMARKING EXISTING CONDITIONS
Benchmark the existing curriculum for the inclusion of CDIO learning outcomes and topics
Benchmark existing teaching, learning, and assessment practices
Benchmark the availability and use of existing workspaces and facilities

12. SAMPLE BENCHMARKING TOOLS
FOCUS: Benchmarking the inclusion of CDIO learning outcomes in the curriculum
METHOD: Structured interviews and surveys
RESPONDENTS: Faculty and academic staff
KEY QUESTIONS: To what extent are each of the CDIO learning outcomes included in your course? Do you introduce them? Do you explicitly teach them? Do you assume students have already learned them, and proceed to apply (utilize) them?
(A sample interview guide is found in the Handbook)
SAMPLE #2
FOCUS: Benchmarking the teaching and learning of CDIO learning outcomes at the course or module level
METHOD: Open-ended interviews
RESPONDENTS: Course instructors and instructional staff
KEY QUESTIONS: What learning outcomes from the CDIO Syllabus do you address? What do you expect students to have learned prior to your course? How do students get feedback on their learning, and how do they use that feedback?
(A sample interview guide is found in the Handbook)
Sample #1 is courtesy of MIT.
Sample #2 is courtesy of KTH.
Give participants time to review the two sample interview forms and ask questions.
Optional Activity:
If there is time, you may want to ask students to interview each other, using either of the two interview guides. Solicit a few comments on the ease or difficulty of this kind of benchmarking.

13. 1. Change the curriculum structure?
STRATEGIC CHOICES
1. Change the curriculum structure?
2. Re-task the existing courses?
3. Create new courses?
The answers to these questions depend on each program’s resources and constraints. There is no “best” answer. The CDIO approach can be adapted to all these strategic choices.
The question of institutional constraints will be revisited later in this session.

14. CURRICULUM STRUCTURE A strict disciplinary curriculum
Organized around disciplines, with no explicit introduction of skills
An apprenticeship model
Based on projects, with no organized introductions of disciplines
A problem-based curriculum
Organized around problems, but with disciplines interwoven
An integrated
curriculum
Organized around disciplines, but with skills and projects interwoven
Disciplines run vertically.
Projects and skills run horizontally.
Refer to “Rethinking Engineering Education”, pp
Curriculum structure is the arrangement of content and associated learning activities into instructional units, or courses, to facilitate intellectual connections among the courses.
No Integration:
1st drawing -- traditional engineering science approach
4th drawing -- traditional apprenticeshp model in which students engage in a sequential series of projects
Integration:
3rd drawing -- Problem-based curriculum), for example,, Aalberg University in Denmark. One of our newest CDIO collaborators, Arizona State University, has a problem-based curriculum
2nd drawing -- Personal, interpersonal, process, product, and system building skills are woven into the disciplines. Most of the current CDIO programs adopted this structure.
Note: A problem-based curriculum is different from Problem-Based Learning (PBL). The former refers to the structure of the entire curriculum; the latter refers to a teaching and learning method found at the course or module level.

15. BLOCK COURSE STRUCTURES
Conventional
Sequential
Block
Bus
Refer to “Rethinking Engineering Education”, figure 4.4 on p. 91.
These diagrams can be confusing when yo see them for the first tme. Spend a few minutes checking that participants understand them.
Each block represents a disciplinary course or design-implement experience.
Conventional: two separate disciplinary courses, with few, if any, linkages
Sequential: two linked courses occurring in sequential terms
Block: two inked courses scheduled in one large time block in the same term
Bus: two separate disciplinary courses that share a common design-implement experience
Linked or merged: two disciplinary courses that are conducted separately for part of the term, then merge into an interdisciplinary approach later in the term
Simultaneous: two linked disciplinary courses conducted in the same term
Linked/merged
Simultaneous

16. SEQUENCING DISCIPLINARY CONTENT
OUTPUT:
”Final” learning outcomes, competence for the engineer
INPUT: Previous knowledge and skills
Course
(black box)
Input to following courses
All courses or modules in the program are presented through their input and output only
Enables efficient discussions
Makes connections visible (as well as lack thereof)
Serves as a basis for improving coordination between courses
Courtesy of KTH - The Royal Institute of Technology.
Refer to “Rethinking Engineering Education”, Box 4.2 on p. 97.
If time permits, ask participants to sketch this exercise on an index card.

17. SEQUENCING ENGINEERING SKILLS
(Based on the curriculum in the Aeronautics and Astronautics program at MIT)
3.2 Communications

18. MAPPING OF CDIO LEARNING OUTCOMES ONTO THE CURRICULUM
Find appropriate combinations of CDIO Syllabus topics and disciplinary content
Sequence the CDIO learning outcomes from simple to complex
Build on existing strengths
Identify the CDIO skills already taught in existing courses and consolidate these if necessary
Identify faculty who are enthusiastic about developing their courses in this direction and work with them
Create new courses when necessary
Take advantage of the course’s sequence in the program

19. SAMPLE SEQUENCE AND MAPPING
(Based on the curriculum in Vehicular Engineering at KTH)
SYSTEMATIC INTEGRATION OF SKILLS
Year 1
Written communication
Introductory course
Oral communication
Teamwork
Project
management
Physics
Mathematics I
Numerical Methods
Mechanics I
Mathematics II
Year 2
Solid Mechanics
Product development
Mechanics II
Fluid mechanics
Sound and Vibrations
Thermodynamics
Mathematics III
Year 3
Signal analysis
Control Theory
Electrical Eng.
Statistics

20. SAMPLE SEQUENCE AND MAPPING
3.1 TEAMWORK
YEAR 1
4B1052 Perspectives of Vehicle Engineering
The project will have a strategy, a planning component, and a time plan. In the beginning of the project, students will have a lecture on how to plan and how effective teamwork are accomplished. In the time plan, different tasks will be divided between the team members. Students will write a short summary on their experiences with teamwork.
SA1226 Physics
An assignment in experimental methods is solved in groups of two.
YEAR 2
AC1010 Solid Mechanics
Assignment to be solved in groups of four students. Groups to be organized by the instructor.
4F1815 Product Development
Students work in groups to solve a technical problem, from ideas to realization.
4B1117 Sound and Vibrations
Students work in groups to build a silencer.
From Malmqvist, J., Östlund, S., and Edström, K. (2006). Integrated program descriptions - A tool for communicating goals and design of CDIO programs. 2nd International CDIO Conference, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden, June 13-14, Available from the authors.
(Courtesy of Chalmers University of Technology)

21. LESSONS LEARNED
The integrated curriculum design process can be carried out in many different ways
Program leader support and modest resources are required
Support and commitment for the change process are needed from faculty, program leaders at all levels, student groups, industry groups, and other stakeholder groups
Active student participation in all phases fosters creative ideas and facilitates implementation
Monitoring of programs and achievements needs to be regular and consistent
These ideas will be revisited in Session 5 -- Adapting and Implementing the CDIO Approach.

22. REFLECTION AND SHARING
In what ways can you integrate the learning outcomes specified in the CDIO Syllabus into your existing curriculum?
Of the many alternative structures presented, which are feasible for your program?
What are the key challenges that you face as you begin (or continue) to reform the curriculum in your programs?
Form groups of three or four. Give each group only one of the questions. Allow minutes for discussion. Then call for sample ideas.