IMPLEMENTATION OF CDIO INITIATIVE IN NEW EUROPEAN EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN RAW MATERIALS

EIT Raw Materials, one of the six Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) initiated by the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) and funded by the European Commission, has the mission to boost competitiveness, growth and attractiveness of the European raw materials sector via radical innovation and guided entrepreneurship. It aims to significantly enhance innovation in the raw materials sector by the sharing of knowledge, information and expertise. This must generate a significant impact on European competitiveness and employment by driving and fostering innovation and empowering students, entrepreneurs and education partners driving toward the circular economy.

To reach the vision, where the European Union’s industrial strength is based on a cost-efficient, secure, sustainable supply and use of raw materials, a new generation of skilled people entering industry, universities and research needs to be developed. Today’s technical MSc graduates in raw materials and especially primary resources (i.e. exploration, extraction, mining and mineral processing and metallurgy) meet the technical standards required by the raw materials industry across the full raw materials value chain and best suits large companies where they often act as specialists and experts. For small to medium enterprises as well as for our future engineers, other skills than technical are necessary.

EIT Raw Materials will educate people that will have an intra- and entrepreneurial mind-set and will be able to develop their functions in new working environments, fostering the entrepreneurial and innovation skills, knowledge and attitudes needed for the entre- and intrapreneurs of tomorrow

The CDIO™ INITIATIVE is an innovative educational framework for producing the next generation of engineers. The framework provides students with an education stressing engineering fundamentals set in the context of Conceiving — Designing — Implementing — Operating (CDIO) real-world systems and products.

There are no academic institutes in Europe that have yet applied CDIO for primary resource related MSc programs. Within the KIC EIT Raw Materials Academy, the overarching brand of all the KIC’s education activities are created in order to stimulate education activities and foster new ways of learning and teaching; an approved education project is focusing on the implementation of the CDIO methodology in primary resources linked programs. The project started in 2016 and focuses on faculty and pilot case development and the contributing partners are from academia, industry and research institutes.

This project focuses on faculty development for an active and experimental learning by teaching the “technical” faculty through CDIO linked courses (entrepreneurship, business, etc.), communicative workshops, inspiration lectures and by involving the “business and entrepreneurial” faculty in exploration, mining, mineral processing and metallurgy related issues also through curriculum and pilot cases developed together with the industry.

This paper describes how this education project is being developed within the EIT Raw Materials and will give an overview of the needed skillset of future engineers demanded in the Raw Materials primary sector. It presents key outputs about already developed and implemented activities in mining engineering and metallurgy related programs.