Over the past three years, various CDIO skills such as teamwork and communication, personal skills and attitudes (e.g. critical and creative thinking, holding multiple perspectives) have been introduced into various technical modules for the Diploma in Chemical Engineering (DCHE) in Singapore Polytechnic. Skills in conceiving, designing, implementing and operating a process, product or system using chemical engineering principles have also been integrated in the threeyear curriculum.
As part of its CDIO implementation plan, the course management team for DCHE is integrating other CDIO skills such as experimentation and knowledge discovery, and professional skills and attitudes (e.g. ethical practice) into the curriculum.
In this paper, we will be discussing the CDIO experience of a new faculty and how this is achieved through a professional development programme to support the initiative. The programme starts with enrolment of a new faculty into a Certificate in Teaching (CT) course, to be completed within one year. A key feature of the CT course is the need for a new faculty to conduct an action research project as partial fulfilment of the course.
Specifically, this paper focuses on the action research project of a new faculty to introduce suitable CDIO skills into a Year 3 module entitled Quality Management and Statistics. The main CDIO skills introduced are experimentation and knowledge discovery, whereby students are required to formulate hypotheses in verifying experimental results under a simulated real-world task scenario in a laboratory. The students need to carry out a series of experiments coupled with statistical analyses to either confirm or nullify the hypotheses. Based on the analysis of their results, the students are also expected to make relevant inferences, and provide suggestions/solutions to resolve the problem in the simulated task scenario.
This paper presents the approach taken in conducting the action research and shares preliminary students’ experience in learning the module, particularly in forming their hypotheses. The new faculty’s own reflection of his experience in re-designing the learning tasks using CDIO will also be presented.