First Evolution of the Introduction to Engineering course - Case Study from the University of Turku

Engineering education in the department of Information Technology at the University of Turku, Finland, follows the CDIO framework. In this paper, we examine the first evolution of the Introduction to Engineering course. The course is based on the CDIO standard no. 4, and it is the very first course for the engineering students when they commence their studies. The background and structure for the course as well as its intended learning outcomes will be presented. Key research questions are how the students and the teaching team have understood the course’s learning outcomes, and how the teaching team has been able to adopt the learning outcomes into the course structure. The research material has been gathered from the two consecutive courses during December 2012 – December 2013. The research material comprises of study journals and feedback that was collected after the course. The questions used in both surveys and study journals were based on intended learning outcomes and partly on CDIO standard no. 4. The results from this longitudinal research shows that the evolution of the course is going to the right direction. The most promising results arise from the group work, which was changed from big groups into smaller ones: from 8 to 9 students per group to 4 students per group. According to the research results, it is important that also in the following Introduction to Engineering courses the substance and knowledge of embedded electronics and software (i.e., programming) is kept and further developed. The key issue for future courses is to further integrate the disciplinary knowledge with other learning areas such as design thinking, problem solving, communication skills, group work and societal understanding of the importance of engineering.

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