The CDIO Initiative is a community of practice aiming at improving and developing engineering education via the CDIO framework. Starting with a project with four participating universities 25 years ago, the CDIO Initiative has developed into a network of universities from all over the world. The framework is based on the fundamental documents the CDIO Syllabus, which supports the process of defining what an education program should aim for in terms of knowledge and skills, and the CDIO Standards which help define how the education program should be designed and run to enable the students to reach the learning goals. The paper gives a summary of the development of the CDIO Initiative over the 25 years, with emphasis on the first years, followed by a description of the adoption of the CDIO framework at Linköping University (LiU). The CDIO framework offers a common language for questions related to education, and it is, to various extent, implemented in all education programs within the Faculty of Science and Engineering at LiU. The CDIO Syllabus has been extended to also cover education programs in, for example, natural sciences, and the extended document, denoted the LiTH Syllabus, is a key component in the system for quality assurance via the use of course and program matrices, respectively. Most programs include an Introduction to Engineering course plus design-implement experiences on several levels. The fact that the CDIO framework is tightly integrated into the education has several possible explanations. First, there has always been strong support on the management level for the use of the CDIO framework. Also, the way to organize the management of the education programs plays an important role, and in the program boards as well as in individual courses there is close collaboration with industry and other parts of society.
