The Master in Development Practice (MDP) intends to be an interdisciplinary master degree program that prepares students to better identify and address the challenges of sustainable development. This MDP program consist of two years of coursework in four intersecting macro disciplines areas-health, natural, social, and management sciences -- combined with cross-sectorial field training. The MDP program will be a part of the global network of universities and collaborating organizations and have been developed according to recommendations outlined in the report of the International Commission on Education for Sustainable Development Practice. It is led by the Earth Institute of the Columbia University, New York. The MDP program is designed for: Generalist development practitioners; Specialist development practitioners; Policy administrators and policy professionals; Private-sector professionals and Educators. Integrating the core areas of the health, natural, social and management sciences, the MDP program will provide students with the substantive knowledge and practical skills required to analyze and diagnose the multi-dimensional challenges of sustainable development such as extreme poverty, climate change and infectious disease.
The MDP curriculum has two years and includes: • Core courses in the health sciences, natural sciences, social sciences and management sciences; • Global Classroom: Foundations of Sustainable Development Practice (FSDP) course that fosters cross-border and cross-disciplinary collaboration; • Electives in a foreign language or additional credits in the core courses; • Field training experiences that provide students the opportunity to gain first-hand experience of integrated development approaches within the real-world context; • Intensive pre-MDP preparation where students may need to take additional courses if they have not fulfilled prerequisite requirements in areas such as chemistry, biology, economics, math or statistics.
Global Classroom: Foundations of Sustainable Development Practice is a web-based course that fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration and allows students and teachers from around the world to participate in collective assignments and learning experiences. Global Classroom was initiated at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, in 2008. The first Global Classroom addressed a broad range of core issues, including health, economics, policy, agriculture, ethics, and education. Today, many universities from around the world have participated. Students from around the world are assigned the same readings and then can join their classmates for live sessions with global experts. The program will start in the 2017/2018 school year.
At ISEP/P.Porto, the MDP program will involve faculty members from 8 schools, from Engineering to Performing Arts. It is a challenge to design a program with so many different people involved, so we resorted to CDIO to provide the framework for program design and operation. Though it is not an engineering program, the core of MDP is a problem solving and project development process, i.e CDIO.
The full stack of CDIO standards was applied in the MDP design. Even the CDIO syllabus v2.0 was used. In this paper, it will be provided a short description of the program and its objectives and it will be explained how CDIO was used in the program’s design process.
Proceedings of the 13th International CDIO Conference in Calgary, Canada, June 18-22 2017