The globalization of economy and the rapid development of technology call for the reform of engineering education to meet the social need for talents. Since 2009, the CDIO engineering education model has been implemented in the major of Chemical Engineering at Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology (BIPT). Starting from the first academic year, CDIO projects are planed every year in the curriculum of chemical engineering program, such as Preliminary Engineering Design in the first year, Secondary Engineering Design in the second year, Chemical Engineering Design in the third year and graduation project in the forth year.This paper mainly introduces the implementation of the first design course for chemical engineering students, the Preliminary Engineering Design course, including course objectives; implement process and outcome assessment, and also several typical project examples. The course objectives are ability-oriented, aiming to develop their abilities of comprehensive use of technology, skills and modern engineering tools to tackle problems, learning ability, the sense of lifelong learning, team organization, effective interpersonal communication and presentation skills. The implement process is mainly comprised of project proposal, medium-term inspection and project defense, and at each stage, conception, design and implementation should be accomplished, accordingly. The outcome assessment is based on the participation of the teamwork, presentation, report and project. The score related to participation is given by his/her supervisor and his/her teammates, and the score related to presentation, report and project is given by committee members. The Preliminary Engineering Design course is popular with students, and most of them like this course. They think the course stimulates their active learning, and they need to search some new knowledge or self-study modern engineering tool to solve the problem, in addition to the knowledge studied in the classroom.
