Assessing 6 Years of CDIO in a Computer Engineering Program

The Informatics (Computer) Engineering Bologna 1st cycle at ISEP (LEI) has over 1100 students and has adopted CDIO guiding principles in the major curriculum revision of 2006/2007 (Bologna Process implementation in Portugal). The program uses a practical approach to learning and over 30% of the students have a job, most of them full-time. It is one of the toprated programs in Portugal in its area (usually ranked 4th place in terms of admission grades) and it is currently applying for EUR-ACE certification. The Informatics Engineering Master (Bologna 2nd cycle) at ISEP was awarded the EUR-ACE certification in April 2012. In the last 6 years, hundreds of students have been exposed to the CDIO practices and over eight hundred have graduated. Has CDIO adoption really been worth the effort? The objective of this paper is to assess the results of these years in terms of learning process effectiveness and graduates’ quality. School records of the students in these 6 years (over 80,000 course grades in 30 courses) and the feedback of internship  supervisors from companies or R&D centers will be used.

Proceedings of the 9th International CDIO Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 9 – 13, 2013.