European initiative on CDIO in raw material programmes

Paper in proceeding, 2017

One of five Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), was launched in Europe in 2014 and has its focus on exploration, extraction, mineral processing, metallurgy, recycling and material substitution of raw materials. To reach the vision, where the European Union’s industrial strength is based on a cost-efficient, secure, sustainable supply and use of raw materials, a new generation of skilled people entering industry, universities and research needs to be developed. Today’s technical MSc graduates in raw materials and especially primary resources (i.e. exploration, extraction, mining and mineral processing and metallurgy) best suits large companies where they often act as specialists and experts. For small to medium enterprises as well as for our future engineers other skills than technical are necessary. As a part of the KIC Raw Materials, the education project “The implementation of CDIO in raw material programmes” started in 2016. The project focuses, during 2016-2017, on (WP1) faculty- and (WP2) pilot case development. There are no academic institutes in Europe that have yet applied CDIO for primary resource related MSc programmes. This paper describes an education project within the KIC Raw material and presents key outputs with implementing CDIO in mining and metallurgy related programmes.