Helping! (Yourself through others)

"Asking why I incorporate community service into my teaching is a little like asking why I incorporate breathing into living."

-Bob Hansman, Associate Professor, WU

While mostly applicable to the American context, the ABET criteria for engineering competence is widely accepted. South Africa also has its own exit level outcomes as stipulated by the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA outcomes) and CDIO has standards driving quality in engineering education. All three these guidelines include personal, interpersonal and system elements as well as professionalism as expected outcome.

Multidisciplinary working and effective communication also features very prominently. Purely technically focussed projects run the risk of detracting the focus of students towards the science of the activity at the cost of self reflection and intra personal growth.

This paper reports on the Community-Based Project aimed at empowering students from the Faculty of  Engineering, Built-Environment and Information Technology at the University of Pretoria. Since this project has been designed prior to the University’s involvement with CDIO, the paper further informs on possible alignment of this existing programme with CDIO guidelines in order to build on similarities and augment if and where  applicable.

2nd International CDIO Conference, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden, 13 – 14 June 2006