The CSU engineering model: educating student engineers through PBL, WPL and an online, on demand curriculum

CSU Engineering is the new civil engineering school at Charles Sturt University in Australia. Established at an institution that has not previously offered Engineering, CSU Engineering has taken the opportunity to design and implement a radically different model for its degree, drawing upon the frontier trends and themes in engineering education globally. The degree commences with a sequence of campus Problem-Based Learning which is followed by a sequence of industry located Workplace Learning. The underpinning technical curriculum is delivered online, on demand in a Netflix-style ‘Topic Tree’. This approach allows for Student Engineers (not Engineering Students) to develop their professional identity from the first day of the degree, and to situate their learning in authentic and then actual learning environments. This paper will enumerate the key dimensions of the program, outline how it is implemented, and present early evidence of the success of this approach.