Post internship student-industry collaborative projects, as vehicle for the realization of challenging parts of the CDIO syllabus

A large part of the CDIO syllabus concerns skills that are difficult to address in a solely academic environment. Collaboration with industry is in reality a must in order to perform the CDIO based education. Student internships in the industry, hence is the core of the DTU B. Eng. program. At DTU Architectural engineering the 5 month internship period is placed early in the curriculum, after 4 semesters of study. It is obviously more challenging to find industry internships for students that are at an early stage in their studies because they need more supervision. However the investment is worth the trouble because the post internship curriculum is provided with pedagogical means to address parts of the syllabus that are on an advanced level in the learning taxonomy. The interface between the internship period and post internship student-industry collaborative projects is an important point of focus. Inquiries into this difficult transition are presented with emphasis on the parts of the CDIO syllabus addressing System Design.