This paper is a case report of why and how CDIO became a shared framework for Community Service Engineering (CSE) education. CSE can be defined as the engineering of products, product-service combinations or services that fulfill well-being and health needs in the social domain, specifically for vulnerable groups in society. The vulnerable groups in society are growing, while fewer people work in health care. Finding technical, interdisciplinary solutions for their unmet needs is the territory of the Community Service Engineer. These unmet needs arise in local niche markets as well as in the global community, which makes it an interesting area for innovation and collaboration in an international setting. Therefore, five universities from Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Sweden decided to work together as hubs in local innovation networks to create international innovation power. The aim of the project is to develop education on undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate levels. The partners are not aiming at a joined degree or diploma, but offer a shared short track blended course (3EC), which each partner can supplement with their own courses or projects (up to 30EC). The blended curriculum in CSE is based on design thinking principles. Resources are shared and collaboration between students and staff is organized at different levels. CDIO was chosen as the common framework and the syllabus 2.0 was used as a blueprint for the CSE learning goals in each university. CSE projects are characterized by an interdisciplinary, human centered approach leading to inter-faculty collaboration. At the university of Porto, EUR-ACE was already used as the engineering education framework, so a translation table was used to facilitate common development. Even though Thomas More and KU Leuven are no CDIO partner, their choice for design thinking as the leading method in the post-Masters pilot course insured a good fit with the CDIO syllabus. At this point University West is applying for CDIO and they are yet to discover what the adaptation means for their programs and their emerging CSE initiatives. CDIO proved to fit well to in the authentic open innovation network context in which engineering students actively do CSE projects. CDIO became the common language and means to continuously improve the quality of the CSE curriculum.
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Since March 2015 the Faculty of Technology, Innovation and Society (TIS) of The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) is a CDIO member with all its twelve programs: Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Management, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, Building Engineering, Civil Engineering, Climate and Management, Industrial Design Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering [Open Innovator], Engineering Physics, Mathematics & Applications, and Process & Food Technology. This paper describes the implementation of CDIO at TIS and discusses methods, opportunities and challenges of such a large endeavor. The CDIO standards have been coupled to the faculty and program policy plans, based on a comparison of CDIO and the Dutch/Flemish compulsory NVAO accreditation standards. The self-evaluation process has exposed differences between the programs, which has lead to grouping them in a fast track (already working with CDIO), a drawing board track (implementing CDIO in a future new curriculum design) and a quality track (using CDIO to improve the quality of the current program). Each track has its own needs and challenges, and thus requires a different approach and will show a different speed of adaptation. Other factors also plea for a more customized implementation process. Challenges discussed are the varying level of understanding of CDIO, combining CDIO with educational blueprints such as 4C/ID or design thinking, technical bachelor of applied sciences programs versus engineering ones and the motivational drivers for change on faculty staff member level. Working in a professional CDIO learning community leads to ownership of CDIO. Despite being a top-down decision, the adoption of CDIO in the twelve programs takes place bottom-up, ensuring continuous education improvement. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannececiliabrink/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/oda-kok-007590b/
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Industrial Design Engineering [Open] Innovation (IDE) is a 3-year, English taught, VWO entry-level, undergraduate programme at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS). The IDE curriculum focuses on the fuzzy front end of (open) innovation, sustainable development, and impact in the implementation phase of product-service design. The work field of Industrial Design Engineering and Open Innovation, like many other domains, is growing increasingly more complex (Bogers, Zobel, Afuah, Almirall, Brunswicker, Dahlander, Frederiksen, Gawer, & Gruber, 2017). Not only have the roles of designers changed considerably in the last decades, they continue to do so at increasing speed. Therefore, industrial design engineering students need different and perhaps more competencies as young professionals in order to deal with this new complexity. Moreover, in our transitional society, lifelong learning takes a central position (Reekers, 2017). Students need to give their learning path direction autonomously, in accordance with their talents and interests. IDE’s Quality & Curriculum Committee (QCC) realized in 2015 there is too much new knowledge to address in a 3-year programme. Instead, IDE students need to learn how to become temporary experts in an array of topics, depending on the characteristics of each new project they do (see Textbox 1). The QCC also concluded that more than just incremental changes to the current curriculum were needed; thus, the idea for a flexible, choice-based semester approach in the curriculum was born: ‘Curriculum M’ (Modular). A co-creational approach was applied, in which teaching staff, students, alumni, prospective students, industry (including the (international) social profit sector), and educational advisors collaborated to develop a curriculum that would allow students to become not just T-shaped (wide basis, one expertise) professionals, but U- or W-shaped professionals, with strong links to other disciplines.
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