Increasing generic engineering competences using coaching and personal feedback

This paper presents the implementation of a new course in analog integrated circuit design at the Technical University of Denmark. The course deals with many of the practical aspects of doing integrated circuit design and is designed using constructive alignment. In the paper, the intended learning objective, teaching activities and the assessment are presented and it is demonstrated how coaching and personal feedback – often used in the industry – is used to improve the generic engineering competences of the students in alignment with CDIO. The course is conducted as if it was a project in a company using a minimum of traditional lectures. The central teaching activities in the course are the status meetings, a review meeting and the time the student use for the actual design task. During these activities the teacher mainly acts as a facilitator for the students using coaching and a four step problem solving methodology. In order to create an environment for the students to practice their generic engineering competences they are throughout the course provided personal feedback by the teacher using a four step feedback model. The course was evaluated using the Course Evaluation Questionnaire (CEQ) and the overall score was 4.3 out of 5.