FOSTERING DESIGN COMMUNICATION SKILLS: A CDIO INSPIRED INNOVATION ENGINEERING COURSE

In the context of junior level courses in Industrial and Systems and computing Engineering of the Engineering Faculty of Universidad de los Andes, projects are developed seeking to strengthen the students’ observation, engineering design, communication and team working skills. Throughout the semester, the students, in teams, observe a problem that they believe could be addressed through engineering. After that, based on their comprehension of the specific problem and specific user, they (1) conceive proposals, (2) design one of them and (3) implement it. Between each stage, the teams get feedback from different stakeholders in order to focus and improve their proposal. Before the end of the semester, students participate in a fair (LaMuestra) to show their projects (based on a prototype) to entrepreneurs, alumni, students and professors from different disciplines. This approach has led to the Innovation Week, a set of public events to share our CDIO activities with our stakeholders. In this paper, we present a learning methodology for the student’s teams to carry out the design of an engineering solution while been challenged to innovate and have a positive impact on society. The methodology and some results of its implementation illustrate the relevance of the CDIO approach.