Kristina Edström: Developing Engineering Education – The CDIO approach

CDIO is an approach for engineering education development based on the idea that engineering education should be better aligned with professional practice and with student motivation, while also providing a deeper working understanding of the technical fundamentals.

The strategy for curriculum development is to integrate students’ development of engineering skills with their acquisition of technical knowledge, with progression throughout the program. But how is disciplinary knowledge related to engineering skills? And how can CDIO be implemented in the programme, and can it be done in cost-effective ways?

The CDIO Initiative was founded by MIT, KTH, Chalmers and Linköping University. It is now a community that consists of about 200 institutions worldwide.

Kristina Edström is Associate Professor in Engineering Education Development at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Engineering Education. She is active in educational development at KTH, in Sweden and internationally. Her research takes a critical perspective on the why, what and how of engineering education development.