Adopting CDIO to Integrate Engineering with Business

The Diploma in Engineering with Business (DEB) is a three-year multidisciplinary diploma programme offered by the Singapore Polytechnic to students who have just completed their secondary school education. Students enrolled in this programme take courses in Engineering and Business that are taught by academic staff from the engineering and business schools respectively. Introduced in 2009, this programme aims to produce graduates who are conversant and versatile in the practical application of both engineering and business concepts, hence becoming “business-savvy engineers”. This broad-based curriculum also provides graduates with more flexible educational options post the diploma in either an engineering or business undergraduate programme.

Offering a programme that covers both engineering and business is not new. Undergraduates in many engineering schools can choose to do business courses offered by the business schools as additional subjects or electives. However, such courses tend to be taught with limited focus and activities to link them to the engineering discipline. Few undergraduate programmes provide a curriculum that is designed with an explicit plan to integrate and apply the engineering and business knowledge acquired. This was also the case for DEB when it was first introduced in 2009.

However, between 2010 and 2012, the DEB management team conducted a review of the programme using the CDIO framework. As a result, the curriculum was enhanced to integrate the learning of the engineering and business disciplines more strongly. This was done by integrating the learning activities of a first year engineering project, Engineering Design and Business Project I, with those of a business subject, Principles of Marketing. In the second year, the learning activities of another engineering project, Engineering Design and Business Project II, were integrated with Professional Selling, a business subject. This paper describes how the DEB curriculum is designed to make explicit connections between these related engineering and business subjects, and how CDIO skills like personal, interpersonal, and product and system building skills are incorporated and assessed (Standards 2 and 3).

The paper will also outline how the integration of CDIO learning outcomes and disciplinary skills in both engineering and business is translated into learning experiences (Standard 7) in this programme.

Proceedings of the 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland, June 12-16 2016