Introduce CDIO Model into Undergraduate Computer Engineering Curriculum—Networked Data Acquisition Systems

With the rapid advancement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), it is getting more difficult to educate the future STEM professionals with emerging disciplinary knowledge. In recent years, the STEM education emphasizes more on students' learning outcomes, as can be seen from ABET, SACS, and other regional accreditation agencies. The CDIO model is a relatively new philosophy that adopted and emphasized the fundamentals in the context of product-system lifecycle from industry: Conceiving, Designing, Implementing, and Operating. In this paper, we detail the steps, procedures, instruments, and educational products we are developing to achieve the conceiving and operating of the CDIO model and present our thought on how the results may positively affect the outcome for the Designing and Implementing in the CDIO model based syllabus. The projects and experiments we created cover the fundamental knowledge of networked data acquisition systems, basic skills in designing and implementing such a system, and structured team-work.