Conceiving and Designing an "Introduction to Engineering" Course with the New Curricula at Telecom BCN, UPC Barcelona

This paper describes a course devoted to “Introduction to ICT Engineering” which, building upon initial restrictions and specifications, has been conceived, designed and implemented at Telecom BCN, UPC BarcelonaTech. This is the first of a set of four design-build courses distributed along the new degrees curricula structure, which have been designed using the CDIO Syllabus and Standards as Engineering Education paradigm.

The course is organized in three intertwingled tracks, covering

• (a) the systems view of complex ICT systems; 
• (b) the basic economics and management concepts of ICT products and services, including project management, and (c) the lab practice of these methods, together with the acquisition of generic skills by the realization of a design-build project (focused upon an undewater robot with emphasis in electronic communication aspects) in student teams. 

The design and implementation of the lab system ICT-related subsystems displays problems whose advanced solutions will be discovered in the subsequent courses within the curricula. The course is currently running as a pilot course with two small groups (30+30 students) before fully deploying it next year to all the new degrees.