CDIO Initiative Research Articles

Priming memory and its important role in learning and in the social and professional behavior of individuals

The latest studies have a proposal to popularize neuroscience in education, extracting the maximum from the science of the nervous and brain system to apply it to educational methodologies and be successful in the teaching-learning process. The objective of this research is to divulg that implicit and undeclared memory, priming, can be an enriching educational tool. The methodology included bibliographic research and correlation of keywords from the latest publications. The result and the discussion highlight methodologies such as the CDIO initiative that, with students working as a team, it is possible to associate smells, colors, names, numbers and gestures of the team members. It is concluded that priming memory, if adopted to different educational and professional contexts, enhances the absorption of knowledge, as an effective technique that can be used to improve learning and professional preparation, whose repetition improves the stimuli over time, before an immediate and unconscious reaction.

The evolution of sustainability in engineering education research: a longitudinal analysis through bibliometrics and the CDIO initiative

PurposeConsidering the relevance of education for sustainable development (SD) to enhancing engineers’ abilities to contribute towards sustainability-related issues, this study aims to help understand the global context of the insertion of SD into engineering education and to provide guidelines to further evolve research and efforts towards implementing Engineering Education for Sustainable Development (EESD).Design/methodology/approachThis study performed a longitudinal analysis using bibliometrics and a content analysis via Conceive–Design–Implement–Operate standards. SciMAT software was used to support the bibliometric analysis.FindingsIn addition to an increase in the practical aspects presented due to a change in the approaches taken to examine key topics, evidence on important concepts such as “life cycle assessment” and “digitalisation” increased in more recent years. However, it was possible to show that, despite the evolution observed throughout the years, several important opportunities exist for engineering programmes to improve and, for researchers, to fill the related gaps in the research.Originality/valueThis study can be used as a guide for future research and as a source of insights for EESD implementation and improvement.

An Empirical Study on the Use of CDIO in Software Engineering Education

Contribution: In this study, we accumulated the knowledge and generated evidence on how and in what context CDIO framework has been used in software engineering (SE) education. The aggregated evidence will enable SE academics in making informed decisions while adopting CDIO for SE education and build upon it. Background: CDIO framework is relevant for SE as it focuses on enabling engineering graduates in conceiving, designing, implementing, and operating complex systems and products. We were not able to find any study that identifies and aggregates the evidence on the use of CDIO for SE education. Research Questions: This study attempts to answer the following research questions: 1) how CDIO has been used in SE education? and 2) what are the experiences of academics in applying the CDIO framework in SE education? Methodology: Using a mixed-method approach (systematic mapping study and interview study with experienced academics in SE), we established the state of the art and practice on the use of CDIO in SE education. Findings: Getting a commitment from the higher management, teachers, and students is a major challenge in the adoption of the CDIO initiative followed by a lack of competence, finance, and resources. Ownership, motivation, persistence, and training of teachers and students are required not only to adopt CDIO for SE but also to sustain it.

Innovative Development of Student Skills in Raw Materials Engineering Programs

The CDIO Initiative (Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate), successfully adopted in those engineering disciplines where the final result is the design and engineering of an innovative product, had not achieved such penetration, however, in other areas such as mining, metallurgy, or civil engineering where conception, design, and implementation do not result in a product, but in a complex process or system (e.g., mining extraction). Since 2015, financed with funds from the European Union, different projects have been developed to implement this methodology in these areas, which have continued later with the universities' own funds. The objective of this work is to show one of these projects of the educational innovation group "Innovatio Educativa Tertio Millenio" of the Technical University of Madrid during the past academic years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, working with two specific techniques such as active learning and design thinking. By making students solve real problems and come up with realistic solutions, they worked on key competencies and could experiment without fear of failure.

CDIO Initiative: A Guarantee for Successful Accreditation of Engineering Programmes

The accreditation bodies and engineering councils set a number of qualifying requirements and accreditation criteria to ensure the quality of engineering graduates and programmes. One of these requirements is the engineering curriculum. Some institutions using the traditional engineering curriculum often face difficulties and burden to meet the accreditation minimum academic requirements as their curriculum lacks the innovation and the integration of graduate attributes such as personal, interpersonal, teamwork, entrepreneurship, development of life skills and emotional wellbeing, among many. This eventually leads to deferred or even declined accreditation. To overcome these difficulties, the CDIO initiative is an ideal tool for successful accreditation. The CDIO standards, syllabus, engineering curriculum, and learning outcomes are not only meeting what accreditation bodies require, but they offer innovative curriculum more on high-level cognitive skills set in the context of the product-system lifecycle; Conceiving-Designing-Operating-Implementing metaphases. This paper shares a successful engineering education experience of the School of Engineering/Taylor’s University and how the CDIO initiative contributed not only to a successful accreditation but also to have a new innovative engineering curriculum. The adopted new curriculum is innovative, hands-on and project-based in order to achieve integrated learning where acquiring discipline-specific knowledge and CDIO skills take place simultaneously

Mixed Integration of CDIO skills into Telecommunication Engineering Curricula

Spain has been intensively involved in designing engineering curricula for the last two years and next academic year all engineering schools will be deploying all bachelor programs adapted to the EHEA and to the Spanish laws. The different frameworks that set the conditions of the process of drawing up new curricula emphasize the use of competency-based learning and the insertion of certain generic skills within the structure of the new plans. In the school of Telecommunication Engineering of Barcelona, the CDIO initiative (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) first developed jointly by MIT and some Swedish Universities, has been chosen as paradigm for new engineering curricula design. We used a mixed approximation to integrate CDIO skills into the study plans. In this paper we will explain the approach to include generic skills when designing new curricula.

The Problems of Engineering Students’ Professional Identity

Engineering education at Ural Federal University has its traditions; one of them is the design of new programs for nascent industries and flexible adaptation to changes in the economy. It allows UrFU engineering programs not only to survive in the conditions of constant external and internal changes but also to remain highly demanded and competitive. The article describes the problems of the professional identity of students of engineering programs, organizational models and didactic techniques that ensure professionalization in the framework of the leading educational programs of the UrFU Engineering School, which have been tested as part of pilot training for undergraduate students in the program ”System Analysis and Management.” The results of the survey among students and graduates of the program, which was conducted in order to understand their professional identity and awareness of the choice of an educational program for obtaining a profession, are presented.
 Keywords: Learning outcomes, CDIO initiative, benchmark, modeling, Industry 4.0, student-centered learning, internships, professional identity, efficiency

Collective Subject in Implementation of STEM Technologies in Engineering Education

Provision of quality of engineering education upon implementation of international CDIO initiative (Conceive – Design – Implement – Operate) results in implementation of new education technologies, in particular: STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). Its implementation allows to solve a set of educational issues concerning motivation of students from the first day by using integrated practically oriented assignments, step-by-step immersion into designing activity. Interdisciplinarity and integration, inherent in the STEM technology, assume moving out of a teacher as a holder of educational situation from his disciplinary area, would demand to be a co-participant of a student activity, his initiative in solving creative tasks. Successful realization of STEM technology depends significantly on new competences of teachers and managers, their capabilities to significant modifications of their occupational activity. Difficulty of implementation of STEM technology is related with unpreparedness of teachers and managers. This work is aimed at substantiation of necessary conditions providing readiness of managers, teachers, and students to implement the STEM technologies characterized as a collective subject. The experimental results serve as theoretical substantiation of the concept of formation of collective subjects (managers, teachers, students), determination of new functionality of managers, teachers, students, stepping of this process to provide implementation of STEM technology. The practical implementation was performed at the Federal innovation platform of Siberian Federal University: Model of system modifications in multilevel engineering education.

Стандарты CDIO и их развитие при подготовке к соревнованиям WorldSkills

The article describes CDIO Initiative international educational project standards and their use within educational program framework “Mechatronics and robotics”. Most notably, application of these standards and contemplations of their development while preparing for WorldSkills competition are looked upon.

PROJECT-ORIENTED TRAINING IN PROFESSIONAL LEARNING OF BACHELORS IN CHEMISTRY

The authors have shown the experience of using the methodology of project-oriented training for the implementation of the international CDIO initiative standards in the disciplines of 1-2 courses of the bachelor's program in Chemistry. The research activities of students in the SurGU «Local Farm» project aimed at creating a system of chemical monitoring of the state and quality of plants grown in protected (closed) soil are considered in detail. It was shown that as a result of project activity in the disciplines «Introduction to project activity» (1-2 semesters) and «Project activity» (3-4 semesters), along with general professional competences, personal and interpersonal competences were formed and developed (communication skills, flexibility, ability to teamwork), and also the level of personal motivation for engineering professions was increased. A comparative analysis showed that the requirements for the learning outcomes to graduates of educational programs in the field of engineering and technology (CDIO Syllabus) are in good agreement with the competencies outlined in the new standards FGOS (3++). This demonstrates the applicability of CDIO standards to the implementation of Bachelor’s programs in Chemistry.

A Curriculum Design Approach by the Means of a General Morphological Analysis

The context of conceiving, designing, implementing, and operating real-world systems and products, namely the CDIO initiative, is a framework for engineering education. It considers 12 standards, which are the reference for curriculum design and assessment. A good implementation of the CDIO standards can be considered as a multi-dimensional complex problem. In order to propose strategies for implementing the CDIO initiative in the Electronic Engineering curriculum at Universidad del Quindío, the General Morphological Analysis (GMA) was used. Some relevant dimensions of the curriculum and their values were contrasted in a cross-consistency assessment (CCA), where 8 dimensions were established, and a total of 34,560 combinations were obtained in the problem space. Through the CCA, the number of coherent combinations was significantly reduced. Finally, these combinations were analyzed to propose the corresponding strategies that are the input for the implementation of the CDIO curriculum in the Electronic Engineering program.

FORMATION OF LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES OF MODERN RUSSIAN CIVIL ENGINEER IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

The article presents the author's view on the new training course "Personnel Management" for masterdegree builders aimed at forming leadership competencies. It is necessary to change the paradigm of training an engineer and include in the process of the formation such subjects that are aimed at forming his or her organizational competencies, leadership, responsibility for making decisions in the field of team management. As a part of the new training approach, it is proposed to build the leadership skills with the help of active teaching methods: business games, project teams, case studies, training. Basing on work experience and curriculum development, it is known that the main difficulty for compilers of curricula is a selection of those subjects that will help to implement these competencies. Therefore, we propose the subject (module) "Personnel management" that has the deep basis of knowledge of many personal issues and is made up of a set of interdisciplinary themes with a set of new activity tools. The condition for the training of civil engineers is to increase the activity component: application of project management, work in small groups (teams), CDIO initiative, interdisciplinary approaches, practice-oriented training.

Innovation of Curriculum Planning in Accordance with CDIO Standards at Ho Chi Minh City University of Transport

The CDIO initiative provides an integral approach including CDIO frameworks and CDIO standards in hopes of realizing students’ learning purposes and of figuring out learning experiences to meet output-standard based education and training. Many Vietnamese universities have become pilot places of CDIO implementation as a main curriculum development not only to satisfy social requirements and international standards, but also to boost creativeness and stimulate new assessment methods and improvements for the curricular. Due to requirements of all-sided and basic innovation of tertiary education ratified by Vietnamese Party and Government (phase 2010-2020), the CDIO implementation is considered as an indispensability in Ho Chi Minh City University of Transport. The paper is aimed to clarify the processes and procedures to develop curricular so as to meet social demands and international standards. This paper also mentions the principles to introduce this curriculum innovation to university educational institutions of Vietnam once the CDIO approach is put into application and implemented.

Innovation of Curriculum Planning in Accordance with CDIO Standards at Ho Chi Minh City University of Transport

The CDIO initiative provides an integral approach including CDIO frameworks and CDIO standards in hopes of realizing students’ learning purposes and of figuring out learning experiences to meet output-standard based education and training. Many Vietnamese universities have become pilot places of CDIO implementation as a main curriculum development not only to satisfy social requirements and international standards, but also to boost creativeness and stimulate new assessment methods and improvements for the curricular. Due to requirements of all-sided and basic innovation of tertiary education ratified by Vietnamese Party and Government (phase 2010-2020), the CDIO implementation is considered as an indispensability in Ho Chi Minh City University of Transport. The paper is aimed to clarify the processes and procedures to develop curricular so as to meet social demands and international standards. This paper also mentions the principles to introduce this curriculum innovation to university educational institutions of Vietnam once the CDIO approach is put into application and implemented.

Revolución por la educación: el inicio de la reforma peruana en la enseñanza de la ingeniería a través de la iniciativa CDIO

Actualmente el Estado Peruano viene realizando una reforma educativa en todos los niveles de enseñanza universitaria. En el caso de la enseñanza de ingeniería, este esfuerzo no viene acompañado con nuevas propuestas de innovación y tecnología. Ante la escasez de modelos competitivos, el futuro de esta reforma dejará de lado la extraordinaria oportunidad de generar profesionales de ingeniería competitivos. La Iniciativa CDIO propone una educación que enfatiza los fundamentos, establecida en el contexto de Concebir, Diseñar, Implementar y Operar productos, procesos, y sistemas. Se centra en la ingeniería de la enseñanza mediante el fomento de aprendizaje práctico de los productos y la creación del sistema. Los estudiantes se enfrentan a problemas de ingeniería reales que requieren una combinación de soluciones tangibles teóricas y prácticas. La idea es exponer a los estudiantes a situaciones difíciles que requieren tanto en el conocimiento multidisciplinario y el aprendizaje social.
 En este presente trabajo, se desarrolla una evaluación preliminar en los diversas iniciativas que viene desarrollando la Facultad de Ingeniería Industrial y de Sistemas de la Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería en el proceso de acreditación para la enseñanza universitaria, esperando lograr un nuevo modelo innovador educativo de ingeniería CDIO.

The role of CDIO in engineering education research: Combining usefulness and scholarliness

ABSTRACT The CDIO Initiative is a community for engineering education development, but since 2016 its annual conference also calls for research. This paper considers possible roles for CDIO in the field of engineering education research (EER). The EER landscape is explored, in particular considering whether the aim of research is to seek knowledge to improve engineering education, or to seek knowledge for its own sake? Although usefulness and scholarliness are not mutually exclusive, the priority matters throughout the research process and in evaluating work. Introducing concepts from similar debates, this paper argues for embracing the tension, to form a productive relationship between scholarliness and usefulness. A dual objective is implied: usefully contributing to the improvement of engineering education and establishing a recognised research field enabling sustainable careers for researchers. Quality mechanisms are necessary for staking out borders and upholding standards, at least to weed out work that is neither scholarly nor useful.

Skills for employability: Identification of the Soft Skills required in engineering education

In a context of increased competition on the job market, soft skills have become as important as the technical skills for employability of Moroccan engineers. Reactive and innovative engineering schools orient their learning process towards the job market requirements. This study aims at examining the soft skills required by accreditation bodies in some developing countries, namely ABET (The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology), ENAEE (European Network for Accreditation of Engineering Education), ABEEK (Accreditation Board for Engineering Education of Korea), JABEE (The Japan Accreditation Board for Engineering Education) et EA (Engineers Australia). These skills are subsequently correlated with the Syllabus of the CDIO initiative founded by MIT (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) In the United States. This syllabus represents a model of engineering program. It has been developed in collaboration with the industry, the government and the university community. In this study we highlight a set of soft skills which we compared with those developed in Moroccan engineering education programs in order to detect their shortcomings and key success factors.

Русская школа подготовки инженеров как основа модернизации инженерного образования в контексте инициативы CDIO

Русская школа подготовки инженеров как основа модернизации инженерного образования в контексте инициативы CDIO

English Cross-Culture Project Course Based on CDIO Initiative Perspective

English Cross-Culture Project Course Based on CDIO Initiative Perspective

The Content of the Practical Component in the Training of Future Teachers in the CDIO Format

The article deals with the essence of the practical component in the training of future teachers. A significant component of the professional training of future teachers in higher education becomes internship in educational institutions. In the process of pedagogical practice, the conditions are most conducive to preparing students to function as a primary school teacher. The project method of teaching students in high school is one of the components of the Worldwide CDIO Initiative (i.e. Conceive – Design – Implement – Operate). This method is aimed at providing students with the possibility of independent acquisition of knowledge in solving practical problems. Organization of practices and project activities are equally important mining tools for acquiring competences at all stages of study. In spite of the knowledge acquired in the course of training, competencies are formed only in the actual teaching activities. The CDIO format creates conditions for the formation of students’ professional competencies as stated in the federal state educational standards of higher professional education of the bachelor studies on ‘Pedagogical education’, profile ‘Primary education’. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s7p11