To practice Bioengineering, from idea to product, requires extensive laboratory efforts, and is seldom possible to do within the frame of a single lab course. To allow for the students to develop such expertise, we have designed an extended CDIO project, which is performed over three subsequent disciplinary linked courses: Gene Technology, Biomeasurement Technologies and Protein Engineering. In this CDIO project, the students themselves create, clone, express and functionally evaluate a mutant protein of medical relevance. Half of the ~60 students performed the functional evaluation as a self-directed laboratory project in close connection to a parallel course in Project Organization, whereas the other half functionally evaluated their proteins in a teacher-directed lab course. Higher-order cognitive skills in laboratory learning as judged by a Perry evaluation were improved during the project for all students, but in particular for those who performed the self-directed evaluation. Furthermore, the students judged their own professional competence to be significantly increased as a result of their taking part in the CDIO project.
2nd International CDIO Conference, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden, 13 to 14 June 2006