CDIO faculty development course – Built-in implementation

Paper i proceeding, 2019

To successfully implement the CDIO approach in engineering programs, a holistic approach is required, connecting the philosophy of the program with teaching and learning activities in the courses. One influential component in this interaction is faculty members and their competence in providing integrated learning experiences, in using active experiential learning methods, and in assessing student learning (CDIO Standard 10). As an effort to support such faculty development, a group of universities has been conducting activities directly aiming to enable and drive CDIO implementation in the participating universities (mainly within the EIT Raw Materials programme). In this paper, we will continue reporting and critically reflecting on these CDIO-based faculty development endeavours. Initially, a faculty development course was launched in 2016 at Chalmers University of Technology and offered to participants from other universities (Bhadani et al., 2017). The paper starts by outlining the adaptation of the course into its second version, followed by investigating the experiences from the first group in 2018. The course was designed to suit both experienced and novice faculty. It offered a staged introduction to CDIO implementation alternated with sessions in which participants worked on their own course development. The rationale for this design was to increase the direct usefulness for the participants, in that they should feel engaged and involved during learning and be able to immediately apply their learning to their own course. To estimate the impact of the course on participants’ actual course design and implementation, participants’ final presentations and feedback were analysed. Interviews were also conducted to gather information about the changes made in the participants’ own teaching, as well as the perceived influence of the CDIO course on those changes. The paper could be used to support organizers of faculty development courses in other universities, by documenting a model that can be implemented as a standard faculty training course.