Assessment of CDIO skills in the context of the Civil Engineering course in the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Singapore Polytechnic

The division of Civil Engineering in School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE) at Singapore Polytechnic started to adopt the CDIO initiative in May 2007. A CDIO design team was formed in July 2007 to study, design and integrate this initiative into two diploma programmes – Diploma in Civil Engineering & Management (DCEM) and Diploma in Environmental Management & Water Technology (DEWT). From literature reviews of past CDIO conference papers and articles, the team affirms that many of these engineering skills are already emphasized in the course. It is timely to recognise the gaps, document them in CDIO terminology and integrate them into the curriculum. One gap is that assessments of these skills are not clearly linked to learning outcomes and documented. The CDIO syllabus has thus provided an overall framework for developing an integrated curriculum and a guide to address our needs for the training of civil and environmental engineering technologists. This paper describes the process of outcome assessment using rubrics to assess CDIO skills (engineering skills) of DCEM and DEWT students at Singapore Polytechnic. The resultant assessment template aims to: a) Assess students engineering skills using rubrics linking to a learning outcome b) Help lecturers assess students CDIO skills within their respective modules