Engineering curricula designated faculty

Think about it. Here we have students prepared in a fairly typical engineering curriculum who go to work for the first time on a real engineering problem. It is the perfect opportunity to ask, What don t they know how to do As a faculty advisor in Senior Design since 1990,1 have learned how to coach students to successfully solve their problems, but I am continually reminded, year after year, about the mismatch between the education a cold war curriculum provides and the demands of a real-world engineering problem. The next seetion considers what is missing. 

The second limitation is the fact that other existing lists of skills lack sufficient detail to be widely understood or implemented. The CDIO Syllabus was developed to address this limitation by creating a clear, complete, and consistent set of goals for engineering education, in sufficient detail that they can be understood and implemented by engineering faculty. This set of detailed goals forms the basis for rational design of the curriculum and a comprehensive system of assessment. 

The paper also recommends that engineering faculty be conscious of fixation and its adverse effects and educate students. In the long run, as educators, we must reflect and reformulate the curriculum to balance fundamental understanding with the need to foster creative thinking skills so that the next generation designers not only analyze designs but also synthesize innovative solutions. 

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