This paper presents how one can enhance his or her own teaching and learning (T&L) approaches by benchmarking against the Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) education framework.
The paper firstly outlines current T&L challenges that are faced by polytechnic educators in Singapore. National and organisational policies and directions, as well as global changes, have made polytechnic education in Singapore a highly complex business. With specific reference to Diploma in Chemical Engineering (DCHE) in Singapore Polytechnic (SP), it is argued that teaching is becoming increasingly challenging, as we have to deal with a wider range of pedagogic and curriculum issues. These include a lack of prior disciplinary knowledge in our first year students and the growing diversity of chemical engineering as a discipline.
Secondly, it takes the perspective that to surmount and overcome such challenges, we need to critically appraise and reframe pedagogical beliefs, as these ultimately shape the T&L approaches that are adopted. It is argued that there is a need to go beyond traditional discipline-based and performance-based T&L approaches (Toohey, 1999) as they are no longer sufficient or effective in today’s T&L context. Instead, one should adopt more experiential and socially critical T&L approaches, which have their basis in cognitive and social constructivism. Such T&L approaches have been found by Biggs (1987) and Ramsden (1992) to promote deep learning in students. Most significantly, in the context of this paper, they are fully congruent with the CDIO Standards
Thirdly, evidence is provided on how one can enhance his or her T&L approaches by benchmarking against the CDIO education framework (in particular, against CDIO standards 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 11). For instance, adoption of the experiential and socially critical T&L approaches, in the form of out-of-classroom activities, and benchmarked against CDIO standard 8, can enhance learning opportunity for a wider range of students.
Finally, in conclusion, the paper summarises how teaching faculty, by adopting experiential and socially critical T&L approaches, can enhance key aspects of practice.
References:
Biggs, John. (1987). Student Approaches to Learning and Studying. Hawthorn, Victoria. Australian Council for Educational Research.
CDIO. (2013). Retrieved on 17 Aug 2013 from http://www.cdio.org/
Graduate Student Instructor (2013). Cognitive Constructivism. Social Constructivism. Retrieved on 06 Apr 2013 from http://gsi.berkeley.edu/
Ramsden, Paul. (1992). Learning to Teach in Higher Education. London. Routledge.
Toohey, Susan. (1999). Designing Courses for Higher Education. Buckingham, England. Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.
NOTE: Singapore Polytechnic uses the word "courses" to describe its education "programs". A "course" in the Diploma in Chemical Engineering consists of many subjects that are termed "modules"; which in the universities contexts are often called “courses”.
Proceedings of the 10th International CDIO Conference, Barcelona, Spain, June 15-19 2014
Conceive
Design
Implement
Operate
