CDIO project is an important part of the general CDIO approach. The project is mostly used to connect relevant knowledge, to address essential requirements, to develop certain soft skills, and to help solve problems in an experimental and collective manner. Above all, the CDIO project is usually considered as the best tool to build and put together teamwork skills, which engineering students usually lack. In this paper, using data collected during the deployment of CDIO’s Capstone Projects in the Software Engineering program of DTU at various stages, we measure, assess and analyze the maturity levels of our students’ teamwork capabilities. Our measurement and assessment in this literature is based on an “in-house” rubric, which addresses key aspects of teamwork capabilities and outcomes along five dimensions of (1) shared leadership, (2) team orientation, (3) effort redundancy, (4) learning results, and (5) student’s autonomy. In addition to the rubric, we also hold interviews and focus group sessions to collect additional information from the students about what they hope to improve on their teamwork capabilities and how they perceive their maturity in teamwork capabilities after each CDIO Capstone Project. Results from this study is of great interest to schools, which are looking for ways to fasten their students’ teamwork maturity process and to balance out between the training of “hard” skills and “soft” skills in CDIO adoption.
Proceedings of the 10th International CDIO Conference, Barcelona, Spain, June 15-19 2014