CDIO Regional Meeting - Asia-Pacific

Curriculum for four-year undergraduate Engineering and Technology programs is generally designed aiming to achieve Program Educational Objectives (PEOs) through attainment of Graduate Attributes (GAs) and Course Outcomes (COs). Though the CDIO syllabus clearly portrays ‘What to teach’ and standards expound ‘How to do it’ through pedagogical processes, it is still felt that students face difficulties in choosing flexible route to acquire required disciplinary knowledge, personal, professional, interpersonal and CDIO skills at their own learning pace to achieve optimal career options from freshman engineering to capstone. This study explores the professional competence and transferable skill-acquisition routes to the students during their program of their study vis-à-vis landing in desired career. Prior to admitting the students, activity-based “Freshman Acquaintance Program (FAP)” is conducted for the prospective students who are willing to pursue their higher education in Engineering and Technology. The outcomes of the FAP addressed certain skills such as 2.1-Analytical Reasoning and Problem Solving, 3.1-Team work and 3.2-Communication listed in the CDIO Syllabus v2.0. In this study, ‘m’ number of clusters, which comprise of knowledge and skills, is mapped to ‘n’ number of career options. Based on the curricular topology for optimal career options drawn in the beginning of the program of study, students chose the cluster of courses in different categories, underwent those courses and now in the Capstone stage achieving their targeted career dreams.