WWB-Area | Learning field

Teaching and Learning | Advanced teaching module

Starting Point

CDIO is an approach for engineering education development, based on the idea that engineering education should be more aligned with professional practice and with student motivation, while also providing a deeper working understanding of the technical fundamentals. The approach was developed in the CDIO Initiative, founded by MIT and three Swedish universities. It is now a community that consists of more than 160 institutions worldwide, with annual conferences and a growing body of literature.

The CDIO curriculum development methodology aims to integrate students’ development of engineering skills with their acquisition of technical knowledge. This is done in both subject-based and project-based learning activities, with progression throughout the programme.

This raises many questions for those who teach in engineering programs:

• How can these ideas be cost-effectively implemented in the education without losing any of the current strengths?
• How can disciplinary knowledge and engineering skills be integrated in subject courses?
• In project courses, how can we assess individual performance fairly?
• In particular, how can we develop the education without adding a lot of teaching time?
  

To address these questions, we will investigate the CDIO approach mainly through concrete examples of its implementation.

Aim

This workshop provides opportunities for the participants to explore the CDIO ideas and consider how they can be applied to their own teaching in TU Berlin courses and curricula. We will also discuss how the CDIO Initiative can be a useful community for academic teaching staff.

Throughout the day participants will collect ideas and tips that can be applied to their own course design and teaching strategies, always considering both the effectiveness for learning and the teaching effort.

Content

• The CDIO approach is investigated through analysing examples of its implementation, illustrating and explaining the main principles.
• Using examples from Chalmers and KTH, we will investigate various strategies for teaching and assessment in subject-based courses. How can disciplinary knowledge be taught in a way that also contributes to students’ development of engineering skills? How can students learn better without the teacher spending more time on teaching and assessment?
• Project courses are often assumed to be expensive and require high teaching effort. To challenge this perception, we will investigate experiences from courses based on student design projects at KTH. We will derive principles for improving both student learning and cost-effectiveness of teaching (most of these principles apply also to subject courses). How can such complex learning outcomes of individual students be assessed in a group project setting? How can also project courses be made cost-effective, sustainable and fun to teach?

Methods

The workshop consists of presentations with room for discussions, and short group sessions. Throughout the day, participants are offered a structured way to collect and share some take-home messages and concrete tips, together with issues and points to consider further. Max number of participants: 15

Notes

Previous lunch lectures on CDIO were given in 2017 (slides online) and 2021 (documentation online)

For registration, please fill in the provided form. In case of any questions regarding the course, please contact Dr. Monika Rummler.

In case of any organizational questions please contact wwb@zewk.tu-berlin.de.

Your binding participation is very important to us. On the one hand, our courses are connected with high costs. On the other hand, we plan much group work and work interactively with you. Hence, should you be unable to attend the entire course or should you be prevented from attending the course at all, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can allocate the place to other interested persons. In the event of multiple unexcused absence, we reserve the right to exclude you from further ZEWK courses.

Please help us to develop our program in a targeted manner. Your data will not be disclosed to third parties.

Im Rahmen der Berlin University Alliance ist unser Programm für die Nachwuchswissenschaftler*innen der HU Berlin, FU Berlin und Charité geöffnet.