STUDENTS’ STRESS AND SATISFACTION IN CDIO EXPERIENCES: FINDING THE BALANCE

Year
2020
Pages
Volume 1, pp.303-313
Abstract

The Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) educational framework has been revolutionizing the world of engineering education since its inception at the beginning of this century. Its approach to business reality, encouraging comprehensive and contextualized project-based learning, has been the subject of numerous praises in recent years. However, working within CDIO initiatives requires maturity on the part of the students, who go from working individually to being part of a team, with the management of conflicts that this transition entails. This new way of working, together with the imposition of delivery dates and the fact of facing new design challenges, which students tend to approach in too many cases through a trial and error strategy, can lead to a higher workload and relevant doses of stress. This workload stress needs to be compensated by the levels of students’ satisfaction, especially as regards their understanding of the learning process and gained outcomes so that the experience can be considered successful in terms of its positive impact on students. This study seeks to assess students’ satisfaction and their relationship with the workload they face. The assessment is done in a set of interwoven courses (Bioengineering Design and MedTech) related to the development and delivery of technological solutions for health challenges. These courses are respectively included in the Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering and the Master’s Degree in Engineering Management at the ETSI Industriales from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The results show that if students feel supported by the group of professors participating in the subjects, their level of satisfaction is very high, regardless of the workload stress, which is not perceived so high. The CDIO methodology is thus reinforced, establishing itself as a set of practices that bring the future engineers closer to their next steps in professional life through a satisfactory process.