DESIGN THINKING COURSE IMPLEMENTATION IN CDIO BASED UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMMES

Thiagarajar College of Engineering (TCE), Madurai, India has adapted CDIO curriculum for all undergraduate Engineering programmes in 2018 to address the increasing gap between scientific and practical engineering demand and to meet the global requirements of professional Engineer. In alignment with CDIO syllabus goals and mission of the institute, new courses, namely Engineering Exploration, Lateral Thinking, Design Thinking, Project Management, System Thinking, Engineering Design Project, Capstone Project and major project were introduced in the CDIO curriculum. The objectives of these courses are to improve creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication among the millennial learners. The course on ‘Design Thinking’ offered at third semester aims to provide a conceive-design experience. The course provides an experiential learning to understand the requirements of users, to challenge assumptions, to redefine problems, to create innovative design solutions, to prototype and to test. In this paper, we present the pedagogical framework, evaluation and grading methods developed for the ‘Design Thinking’ course. The evaluation was carried out based on design quality and the demonstration of the prototype considering both individual cognitive development and collective team effort. From the formal course exit survey and informal interviews with the students, significant students’ engagement was observed in the course through teamwork. Students have experienced design-build-test process with a customized design thinking approach through periodical project review and poster presentations in oral and written forms. Performance analysis on course implementation has confirmed significant improvement in technical, personal and interpersonal skills of learners. Inclusion of community projects in project-based learning served as an efficient pedagogical method to promote students’ engagement in self-learning.