Curriculum Design

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Curriculum Design Ed Crawley
The Wallenberg CDIO Program
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CURRICULAR GOALS

• Conceive and design a reformed curriculum to
  allow students
• To master a deeper working knowledge of the
  technical fundamentals
• To learn the skills necessary to lead in the
  creation and operation of New Products and
  Systems
• To motivate, stimulate and integrate Student
  Learning

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OUTCOMES AND PROJECTS

• Models for curricular structure and design
• - P1 curricular design
• - P3 introductory courses
• - P4 disciplinary links
• - P5 the curricular aspects of design-build
  experiences
• Curricular materials for CDIO education
• - P2 teaching CDIO skills

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P1 CURRICULAR DESIGN

• The CDIO Syllabus
• - A set of clear, complete, consistent goals
  for engineering education
• - The basis of curricular design, gap analysis,
  assessment, etc.
• - Largely completed and reported by Sören
  Östund
• Curriculum Benchmarking
• - Thoroughly benchmark existing teachings in
  CDIO Skills
• - Correlate teaching with the expected level
  of proficiency
• in Syllabus
• - Identify strengths and potential improvements
  in programs
• - Data collected and analysis underway - to be
  reported by Johan Bankel
• Syllabus establish requirements - Benchmarking
  gives status

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P1 CURRICULAR DESIGN (CONT)

• Benchmark other engineering educational models
• (preliminary results)
• Perform some early pilots to gain insight and
  experience (preliminary results)
• Develop concepts and models of how CDIO skills
  education integrate into disciplinary education
• (preliminary results)
• Plan better-controlled development experiments
  for Year 2.
• Learn from studies and experiments, and from
  there evolve designs

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EXISTING MODELS OF CURRICULAR ORGANIZATION

• Engineering Science
• - Disciplines are the organizing principles
• - Little motivation by concrete examples before
  abstraction
• - Less explicit connection of learning
  objective to application or utility
• - Rigorous treatment and breath of coverage
• - Students are well prepared for research
  careers
• Problem based learning
• - Problems are the organizing principle
• - Problems create motivation for learning
• - Explicit connection to learning utility
• - Concerns about rigor of treatment and breath
  of coverage
• - Students are well prepared for practical
  engineering in an ambiguous world

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CDIO MODEL OF CURRICULAR ORGANIZATION

• CDIO model
• - Disciplines are the organizing principle, but
  with interwoven design build experiences
• - Design build experiences motivate and
  reinforce learning and teach system building
• - Clear connection of some learning to utility
• - Rigor and breadth of coverage preserved from
  Engineering Science model (/-)
• - Students are well prepared to be leading
  engineers and strategic researchers

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CREATE CURRICULAR MODELS OF SYSTEMS EDUCATION
CDIO

• Traditional Engineering Education is based on
  decomposition of knowledge into
  discrete/disconnected disciplinary chunks.
• Students need to learn the hands-on aspect of
  these chunks
• Students need to learn how to work tradeoffs and
  interfaces between disciplinary chunks.
• Students need to learn how to abstract, decompose
  and synthesize.

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MODELS OF CDIO INTEGRATION
Challenge - how do you create a curricular
structure to allow disciplinary linkage and
integration of CDIO skills into a disciplinary
organization

• Block - one or several subjects and CDIO
• content are completely merged
• Linked - subjects are taught separately
• but at some point coordinated or merge
• Umbrella - subjects are taught separately
• but all connect to some coordinating activity

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BLOCK

• The subjects are merged together, and taught as
  one unified subject with embedded CDIO build
  skills
• Done at MIT in 2nd year with 4 subjects
• Advantages - very flexible and effective for CDIO
  skills and disciplinary linkages
• Disadvantage - difficult to coordinate within
  most programs
• System Architects call this integral

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LINKED

• The subjects are taught separately, but at some
  point tightly coordinate or merge
• Done at Chalmers in Manufacturing Technology, and
  Machine Element Design
• Advantages - good for disciplinary links,
  requires coordination of only 2
• Disadvantages - CDIO skills harder to integrate
• System Architects call this modular-slot

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UMBRELLA

• The subjects are taught separately, but all link
  to some coordinating activity
• Pilot in advanced design course at KTH, and in
  Project Bruno at Chalmers
• Advantages - good for disciplinary links, CDIO
  skills
• Disadvantages - Requires N1 curricular elements,
  issues of synchronization
• System Architects call this modular-bus

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P3 - INTRODUCTORY COURSES
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A

• Goal
• - To motivate students to study engineering
• - To provide a set of personal experiences
  which will allow early fundamentals to be more
  deeply understood
• - To provide early exposure to system building
• Pilots
• - New introductory course for Y program - LiU
• - Introduction to Aerospace and Design - MIT
• - Introduction to Mechanical Engineering -
  Chalmers
• - Perspectives on Vehicle Engineering - KTH

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P4 - DISCIPLINARY LINKAGE

• Goals
• - To initiate an integrative / system view of
  how disciplines work together
• - To deepen understanding of disciplines by
  forcing students to compare and contrast
• - To (potentially) increase industry
  participation
• Pilots
• - Project Bruno at Chalmers
• - Thermo / Control pilot at MIT
• - Survey of linkages at LiU

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P5 - DESIGN-BUILD EXPERIENCES

• Goals
• - To provide a complete experience in system
• building
• - To provide a vehicle for CDIO skills
  education
• - To provide a set of personal experiences to
• support deeper learning of the fundamentals
• Pilot
• - Solar powered aircraft at KTH
• - Unified electric airplane at MIT
• - Mechatronics Course at Chalmers
• - Electronics Course at LiU

The curriculum group on curriculum design issues,
while the workshop group focuses on how to use
these experiences to enhance student education