Juha Kontio, Dean at Turku UAS, continues as Director of the global network of higher education institutions

Juha Kontio, Dean for Technology and Business Sector at Turku University of Applied Sciences, has been selected to continue as Director of the Global Technology Education Development Network (CDIO) at its annual meeting last week in Tunis, Tunisia.
 
- During my first two years, there was a lot of focus on developing the organization's operations and strengthening its operating models. During this current term, the biggest goal is to develop CDIO as a framework for support for education development, says Kontio.
 
The network has two directors and Helene Leong continues as CDIO's second director. He is the Director of Education Development Department at Singapore Polytechnic.
 
CDIO stands for Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate. CDIO is now the largest technology network in the world and was born in the United States at MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) in 1997. Systematic development work has kept CDIO's goals fresh and CDIO has maintained its interest widely around the world, as evidenced by the higher education institutions that joined the network in Tunisia from Spain, Morocco and Australia.
 
- For myself, the CDIO network provides a vantage point to the current state of technology education worldwide, as well as a view of development activities and trends in various higher education institutions. The position also enables the steering of trends in technology education together with the management team. For Turku University of Applied Sciences, my mission brings awareness and opens up opportunities for us to expand international cooperation.
 
Turku UAS has been a member of the network since 2007, when it was accepted as the first Finnish higher education institution. Turku UAS is part of CDIO's European region.
 
- In practice, all of our Bachelor's programmes have plenty of CDIO elements, such as diverse learning methods and environments and strong links to industry. Our latest curriculum reform relied very strongly on CDIO's ideas, being a very central part of the development of our educations, Kontio summarises.