All B.Eng. courses offered at the Technical University of Denmark now follow CDIO standards. Recently (Spring 2008) a new course – 28156 Process and Product Design - was introduced in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering. The course has typically about 30-40 students. An integrated course combining the two disciplines of Product Design and Process Design has several challenges, not least because the subjects do not necessarily have much in common except a similar-sounding name. However, such a course gives tremendous opportunities, since it enables a student to follow the supply chain from raw material to finished product – at a time when a shift of the employment of chemical engineers from traditional bulk chemical positions to companies producing advanced products is observed.
From a CDIO perspective, it provides an excellent opportunity for a comprehensive implementation of CDIO principles in a single course. Already the traditional chemical engineering “capstone” design course has for decades embodied many of the essential features of CDIO (for example the focus on group work, development of interpersonal skills, the open-ended nature of design problems).
Another aspect of CDIO that is implemented in the course is standard 3 – Integrated Curriculum - meaning that the course projects draw on competences provided in other subjects the students are taking in parallel with Process and Product Design. This in turn has the benefit of requiring increased, broader teacher competence and forces teachers in different disciplines to communicate - which ties in with Standard 9 – Enhancement of Faculty CDIO skills.