ANZAC CDIO regional centre and workshop, 17-18 July 2007

The University of Sydney and the University of Auckland are in the process of adopting an innovative educational framework for producing the next generation of graduate engineers. This framework, called CDIO (Conceiving - Designing - Implementing - Operating), provides undergraduate students with an education which stresses engineering fundamentals set in the context of real-world systems and products. The framework includes learning experiences that lead to the acquisition of personal, interpersonal, product and system building skills,
integrated with the learning of disciplinary content. It provides a holistic framework for a strong engineering education incorporating a complete set of graduate attributes.

CDIO is universally adaptable by all engineering schools as the framework for their curricular planning and outcome-based assessment and was developed through an International Collaborative Initiative with input from academics, industry, professional engineers and students.

A consortium of 23 Universities across the world, led by MIT, is committed to setting their engineering programmes in the CDIO context and the framework is becoming increasingly widely adopted.

Essentially the collaborators are joining together in a drive to improve engineering education to complement the efforts of many national bodies such as Engineers Australia and corresponding bodies in the USA, UK and Europe.

Further information about CDIO and the collaborating Universities, programs and standards may be found at www.cdio.org

We are now establishing an ANZAC Regional Centre for CDIO, jointly organised by Sydney and Auckland, and seek your participation in this exciting and innovative approach to Engineering Education. Our first event, planned for 17-18th July this year, will be a CDIO Workshop, to be run at the University of Sydney. It will be led by Prof. Daryl Boden of the US Naval Academy and Prof. Kristina Edstrm of KTH. We anticipate that there will be a small charge of $100 for the workshop to cover teas, snacks and materials. There is no fee for joining the ANZAC Regional Centre for CDIO as a collaborator.

The workshop will be followed with a regional collaborators meeting in which we will establish an agenda for future regional activities to share ideas and experiences of active learning, design and build projects, first year experiences and many other aspects of the CDIO standards.

We hope you and your staff will participate in this collaboration and would appreciate it if you would circulate this notice to all your engineering academic and teaching staff.