Work-Based Learning Models in French Engineering Curricula

The CDIO framework is recognized to associate several stakeholders in its quality enhancement processes. Among them, industry partnership is to consider, as a rational for several CDIO standards and maturity levels. One the one hand, with most engineering institutions in France under the aegis of ministry of industry, and on the other hand with one of the oldest accreditation body for engineering education being also French, using industry internships to improve the quality of engineering higher education is in place in French accredited engineering programmes since several decades. In the 90’s, the French Commision des Titres d’Ingénieurs introduced in its accreditation standard a compulsory internship period of 28 weeks for all engineering programmes.

In order to include an early exposure of engineering students to professional practice, integrated curricula in line with latest programme outcomes (i.e. ABET graduate attributes at Master level or ENAEE learning areas) are thus in place in many French institutions. The focus of this paper is first to recall the various models of internship and apprenticeship in French engineering education and to analyse two exemplar integration in line with CDIO syllabus: one in a highly selective public Grande Ecole in ICT, an other in a private multisite engineering institution strongly linked to professional branches and national qualification framework. Both institutions are CDIO collaborators.

The analysis presented in the paper may provide some inputs to international CDIO collaborators or newcomers investigating to include Work-based Learning as integrated activities in their programmes so as to better bridge some gaps with industry requirements and integrated CIO skills. This analysis also provides some rationale to meet intended outcomes for students. From then, the existing 12 CDIO standards are put to the test in order to draft opportunities of reference model adaptation and ultimately improvement of the quality of engineering higher education from various stakeholders viewpoints.

Proceedings of the 13th International CDIO Conference in Calgary, Canada, June 18-22 2017