Collaborative quality enhancement in engineering education: an overview of operational models at a programme level

International audienceThis article discusses the tension between quality assurance and quality enhancement in engineering education at a programme level. It acknowledges that accreditation has evolved for many years, but does not agilely support innovation or implement changes in educational programmes. Existing quality assurance systems, institutional collaboration networks, as well as new innovative quality enhancement models and processes are described, contrasted and synthesised. Quality enhancement is analysed based on its function as a source of inspiration and dissemination of good practice. The article reflects on a novel and more collaborative approach to quality enhancement, built on the foundations of specific pedagogical standards and rubrics (e.g. CDIO). One solution leading to real continuous quality enhancement could be flexible and agile evaluation processes. These are founded on measurement and rating frameworks and complemented with quality assurance for engineering education. Incremental enhancement is based on relevant needs identified collaboratively between programmes

Active learning in redesigning mathematics courses for engineering students

“Prepare, Participate, Practice”: active learning in designing basic maths courses for engineering students at TU Delft works! The PRoject Innovation Mathematics Education (PRIME) at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is all about redesigning mathematics courses for engineers. This paper describes the process of developing, implementing, evaluating and implementing again of three basic courses at TU Delft using a blended learning approach developed by a growing team of teachers from the mathematics department. Our findings suggest that the approach taken enhances students’ learning performance in maths education. The main results show that students have a more active learning experience compared to the traditional setup of these courses, leading to more engagement, more interaction and better results. An important role is played by meaningful examples taken from the engineering faculty where the students are studying, showing students from that faculty what role the mathematics play in their field of interest. This is also used to develop their skills in mathematical modelling

The CDIO framework and new perspectives on technological innovation

Technological innovation happens on a daily basis all around us. Yet, in our educational programs there is rarely any attention paid to what this is and how this unfolds over time in real life. This is not at all surprising, since there is not one unified and widely accepted body of knowledge on technological innovation that is grounded enough, meaning, knowledge based on research of technological innovation practice. The CDIO-framework is implicitly addressing innovation from the perspective of existing technological knowledge and therefore is not yet equipped enough for the purpose of tech-innovation. This paper therefore aims to initiate a discussion on what technological innovation is and how this could fit within the CDIO-framework. We will provide a definition of technological innovation based on innovation theoretical framework which reaches its readiness when practice is able to apply the new technology to design, engineer, build, maintain and dispose the objects that apply that particular technology. This lens will be used to analyze a well-documented case thatreports on the development of a new structural aircraft material that is now widely used in the Airbus A380, hence a technological innovation. It will be shown in this paper that the research activities that support the development of the new technology, follow the logic of innovating as a generic and natural phenomenon. The paper ends by proposing a possible path to bring the subject of technological innovation within the confines of our educational curricula, without too much cutting on the subjects that we are teaching. Its base comes from the idea that what we are teaching today is the result of a technological innovation process of yesterday

Visualizing 17 years of CDIO influence via bibliometric data analysis

visualizing multi-dimensional indicators of influence in communities of practice (Youtie & Shapira, 2008). Such an approach has been used to map emerging fields of research such as synthetic biology and nanotechnology (Shapira, Kwon, & Youtie, 2017; Youtie & Shapira, 2008). Using this approach, one can track citation and social network data over time to develop a deeper understanding of the influence of the CDIO initiative on engineering education publications since its inception (i.e., the past 17 years). In this paper, bibliometric data analysiswill be used to examine how publications on the CDIO Initiative have evolved. Visualizations are presented using an open-source visualization tool, VOSViewer, and used to understand geographic distribution and co-authorship. A word frequency and co-occurrence analysis has been used to analyze title and abstract data over the same time period. Geographic author network analysis reveals continued growth in regional collaborations over the past seventeen years. Co-authorship by author name reveals a core community of researchers, which has diverged over time into dispersed collaboration groups. Word co-occurrence analysis of title and abstract data from Scopus reveals that design-implement and project-based learning activities have been the central topic of CDIO-related engineering education literature over this time period. An analysis of the terms “faculty competence” and “learning assessment” indicates that these topics are comparatively under-served in the literature, representing fertile research topics for practitioners. The benefit of this research is to provide insight to past development areas and opportunities for growth in the CDIO Initiative

A design-based vision on future roles in engineering

In this paper, we present a vision on how engineers can play different roles in future society 2030. First we predicted how society in the Netherlands (in relation to Europe and the rest of the world) is going to develop and how future engineers will behave, act and take their position in this future world. We used the ‘Vision in Design’ methodology to unravel the complexity of future society step-by-step and to understand the diversity of engineer(ing)-behaviour: 260 relevant future conditions for 2030 were derived from 10 interviews with visionaries in society, experts in the field of engineering education and from literature search. Clustering these factors into ten driving forces helped us to discover three independent determining dimensions, defining eight possible engineer-behaviours in 2030. As a result of this rich contextual research, these eight roles are further illustrated with accompanying skills and pathways to support role development. The vision and roles have been developed in co-creation and validated in a series of workshops with a wide variety of people within and beyond academia and within the professional world of engineering