CDIO IMPLEMENTATION IN THE ICT ENGINEERING CURRICULUM – SEMESTER PROJECTS

CDIO has been in the center of the new curriculum development for the ICT department of Lapland University of Applied Sciences since the year 2013. The first step was to adopt the principle that CDIO is the context of ICT engineering education and then ICT department determined the outcomes for learning of the skills associated outlined in the CDIO Syllabus. ICT program was also benchmarked against more experienced CDIO implementers to learn from the best practices. Since then continuous improvement has been done to enhance the ICT department competence in CDIO skills. In the latest self-evaluation three main areas for improvement were identified to satisfy CDIO standards 5 (Design-Implement Experiences), 9 (Enhancement of Faculty Competence) and 11 (Learning Assessment). This document describes how the development work has been done. While starting from the existing curriculum it was decided that the new curriculum based on project-based learning (PBL) would be piloted with selected courses. The real-life projects were from local companies and the University’s cooperation R&D&I (Research, Development and Innovation) projects. The new Curriculum in the pilot was decided to be based on 30 ECTS credits semester projects due to results of piloting other options as well. Named teacher teams who will also implement the future projects designed Eight (8) semesters. Each team was comprised of professors from various fields. The teacher team planned the integration of the selected courses for each semester – semester-based projects. Students learned to use modern project management techniques like Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Lean – skills what ICT Engineers need after finishing their studies. The first real-life R&D&I learning projects piloted in the curriculum development support also the Lapland UAS strategy, e.g. eSled (the electric snowmobile), iLodge (intelligent Lodge for tourists) and Digital Trekking Services on the Arctic Circle. These projects are described more detailed in this document.