CDIO: A New Vision for Engineering Education

Engineering education and real-world demands on engineers have in recent years drifted apart. Realizing that this widening gap must be closed, leading engineering schools in the USA, Europe, Canada, UK, Africa, Asia, and New Zealand formed the CDIO Initiative: A worldwide collaborative to conceive and develop a new vision of engineering education.

CDIO is based on a commonly shared premise that engineering graduates should be able to: Conceive – Design — Implement — Operate complex value-added engineering systems in a modern team-based engineering environment to create systems and products.

The CDIO Initiative thus offers an education model stressing engineering fundamentals, set in the context of the Conceiving — Designing — Implementing — Operating process.

The CDIO Initiative:

• Is rich with student projects complemented by internships in industry

• Features active group learning experiences in both classrooms and in modern learning workshops/ laboratories, and rigorous assessment and evaluation processes.

The CDIO Initiative’s goals are to:

• Educate students to master a deeper working knowledge of the technical fundamentals
• Educate engineers to lead in the creation and operation of new products and system
• Educate future researchers to understand the importance and strategic value of their work

The CDIO Initiative was specifically designed as a template that can be adapted and adopted by any university engineering school. Because CDIO is an open architecture model, it’s available to all university engineering programs to adapt to their specific needs. Participating universities (“Collaborators”) regularly develop materials and approaches to share with others.

CDIO has open and accessible channels for the program materials and for disseminating and exchanging resources. CDIO collaborators have assembled a unique development team of curriculum, teaching and learning, assessment, design and build, and communications professionals. They are helping others to explore adopting CDIO in their institutions.