Designing CDIO capstone projects: a systems thinking approach

Abstract

Given the all-pervasiveness of Systems thinking -which consists of thinking about things as systemsas a way of reasoning, in this work we will describe its application to make an interpretation of how to conceive and design a final year CDIO capstone course. Both the student teamwork structure as well as the complex engineering system itself addressed in the project are described in terms of entities, links, form and function, thereby pointing out their formal and functional interaction. The ultimate goal of the Systems thinking perspective is, given the necessary ingredients, to try maximizing the chances of the emergence of a fruitful capstone course, namely a culminating project that yields a set of students qualified to CDIO complex engineering systems.