In recent years, practice-based learning has been establishing itself as a new norm in higher education: an enabler to foster knowledge, skills and innovative thinking in young learners. Conceive, design, implement and operate (CDIO), a well-established pedagogical methodology, offers many opportunities for education providers seeking to best achieve this practice-based learning within various educational environments. Case studies of engineering programs that made use of the CDIO model provide illustrations of how the ideas were put into effect in actual projects. This paper draws on a CDIO-based design case study where students were requested to solve a real engineering problem; in order to explore the great potential of such a teaching and learning paradigm in practice settings. Some first-year mechanical, biomedical and product design engineering students studying at the Canterbury Christ Church University were set a design brief by a Ford Motor Company tier supplier, to design a high security lock for commercial vehicles which works on both sliding and rear hinged slam doors. The project had twelve engineering groups, each with three or four students sharing responsibility for separate project design and engineering roles: including design sketches; computer-aided modelling; engineering material investigation; finite element analysis; computer-aided manufacturing; prototyping; project reporting and company presentation. In order to analyse the effect of incentives on the underlying motivation of learners, a cash prize was secured via the Engineers in Business Fellowship (EIBF) organisation, to be shared between the winners selected by the industrial partner after a detailed study of benefits, manufacturability and potential innovation. This paper documents the findings of collected qualitative and quantitative data as part of this project-based case study, and furthermore, reflects on the effectiveness of CDIO implementation on the depth of students’ knowledge and level of practical engineering learning. The objective here is to evaluate the individual and collaborative learning processes that occur among a group of students as they use CDIO active learning tactics. The analysis reported in this paper can serve as a foundation to illustrate how educators may better prepare their students for joining the workforce of the future, by using an active learning approach that provides more weight to practical than theoretical knowledge.
