Evaluating the CDIO Self-Evaluation

For several years the CDIO initiative have been asking institutions and programmes to do a self-evaluation in order to support the continued improvement of the CDIO implementation at the institution/programme.

The process of creating the CDIO self-evaluation rubric was done in 2007 - 2010. Two of the tree authors took part in the final evaluation of the rubric used for the self-evaluation.

Now three years have passed and we have had real experience with using the rubric for several times and several programmes at our three institutions. In this article we will evaluate the self-evaluation from the view of a program responsible - are the descriptions understandable, are the descriptions on the same level, …?

The self-evaluation is done on a six point scale. There is a general idea that the evaluation of the levels of all 12 standards should be compliant to Table 1

Table 1 Generic description of the six levels (copy from the self-evaluation rubric) 5 Evidence related to the standard is regularly reviewed and used to make improvements. 4 There is documented evidence of the full implementation and impact of the standard across program components and constituents. 3 Implementation of the plan to address the standard is underway across the program components and constituents. 2 There is a plan in place to address the standard.

1 There is an awareness of need to adopt the standard and a process is in place to address it. 0 There is no documented plan or activity related to the standard.

As one example of the focus of the evaluation, the rubric for standard 8 (Active learning) could be used (copy from the self-evaluation rubric):

5 Internal and external groups regularly review the impact of active learning methods and make recommendations for continuous improvement. 4 There is documented evidence of the impact of active learning methods on student learning. 3 Active learning methods are being implemented across the curriculum.

2 There is a plan to include active learning methods in courses across the curriculum. 1 There is an awareness of the benefits of active learning, and benchmarking of active learning methods in the curriculum is in process. 0 There is no evidence of active experiential learning methods.

Some questions that emerge are: Why do we need to document the evidence of active learning? Going through the research literature in education, we can find plenty evidence that active learning is effective. What we need evidence for is that active learning actually is taking place (which is more than level three where they are being implemented). On level 5, why do we need both internal and external groups to review the impact?

The article will - as already stated - evaluate all 12 rubrics and give suggestions for improvements.

Proceedings of the 10th International CDIO Conference, Barcelona, Spain, June 15-19 2014