Innovation and Teamwork Training in Undergraduate Engineering Education: A Case of a Computing Engineering Course

In the last few years a computing engineering course has been taking form at the Universidad de los Andes (Bogota, Colombia). The course brings students and entrepreneurs together with innovation projects centered around the productive sector. This paper presents the experience of the course "Innovation with Communication and Information Technologies'' in which, within the CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) framework (with an initial observation stage), a group of entrepreneurs from the ICT sector act as coaches for teams of students who, in an autonomous way, propose innovative and sustainable projects. Based on an evaluation process based on the Cybersyn methodology of indicators and indexes, evidence is generated of a growth in innovation and teamwork abilities as well as student development during the last year of undergraduate studies. This paper is structured in three parts: (1) a review of the literature associated with the development of abilities and innovation and teamwork in engineering schools with an emphasis on the phases of CDIO; (2) a detailed description of the process and evaluation of the proposed course in computer engineering; and (3) the main results obtained during the last year that will enable the proposal to be replicable in other engineering courses. A conclusion is presented with recommendations and a view of future work.