A market approach for curricular capstone-internships

ABSTRACT

The Informatics Engineering Bologna 1^st cycle at ISEP (LEI), which lectures more than 1200 students, has adopted good principles and practices in the major curriculum revision of 2006--2007 (Bologna Process implementation in Portugal). The program uses a mostly practical approach to learning and over 30% of the students have a job, most of them full-time. In 2013 LEI received the EUR-ACE Quality Seal from ENAEE and nowadays is one of the top-rated programs in Portugal in the Informatics area. In the last 9 years, hundreds of students have been exposed to the CDIO Initiative™ (CDIO) practices and 955 students have graduated. CDIO adoption has been essential in terms of learning process effectiveness and graduates' quality. This paper will focus on the importance of LEI curricular capstone-internship activity, how it works and is managed, and the feedback of internship supervisors from companies or R&D units. We believe that LEI's capstone-internship approach can be applied to other engineering programs, with the necessary adaptations to each specific program. This paper addresses relevant educational issues in: Project work in engineering education; First contacts with engineering profession; Improving engineering competences during education; Engineering graduate students competences versus companies professional needs.

References

1. The CDIO Initiative, http://www.cdio.org {13-Jul-2015}
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4. European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/ects_en.htm {13-Jul-2015}
5. Martins, AM, Costa, AC 2010, Mass Customization in Engineering Programs: A Framework for Program Management, Proceedings of the 6th International CDIO Conference, Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal, June 15-18, 2010, http://cdio.org/files/document/file/T4A_Paper_2.pdf {13-Jul-2015}
6. Martins, AM, Costa, AC, Ferreira, EP, Rocha, J 2013, Assessing 6 years of CDIO in a Computer Engineering Program, Proceedings of the 9th International CDIO Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 9-13, 2013, http://cdio.org/files/documenffile/W5Bl_Martins_147.pdf {13-Jul-2015}
7. Costa, AC, Martins AM 2011, A Knowledge/Skills/Competence Descriptor Based Graduate Grading System for CDIO Programs, Proceedings of the 7th International CDIO Conference, 2011, Danish Technical University, Copenhagen, http://cdio.org/files/document/file/59_paper.pdf {13-Jul-2015}
8. Sursock, A 2015, Trends 2015: Learning and Teaching in European Universities, ISBN: 978907899754, European University Association, http://www.eua.be {13-Jul-2015}

Index Terms

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing and business