Resistance to Change in Institutionalizing the CDIO Standards : From a Waterfall to and Agile Improvement Model

Educational program transformation plays a recurrent and key role in the future of an institution. An educational reform is a tricky strategic and engineering issue. It is also a complex management challenge which has to overcome possible conflicting and restraining forces. In order to be continuously prepared for national or international formal accreditations, and more easily face resistance to the changes induced by educational reforms, Telecom Bretagne, a French graduate engineering school, has deliberatively chosen to use the CDIO standards as a dynamic tool first under a cascade incremental cycle. Since 2008, our policy of taking standards one step at a time, based on a process model at a slow pace, allows to support peace among educational managers, program developers and teaching staff, so that our approach results in an effective adoption of the CDIO principles. We are now able to share our experience of using some of the CDIO standards to improve program quality and meet accreditation expectations, where industrial partners and students are strong change agents. Our approach instanced in two different programs at Master levels, a medium size full-time generalist program (650 students) and a small size specialized apprenticeship program (120 students), is described and analyzed in this paper. For institutions expecting or encountering some difficulties with staff resistance to changes, our results and the lessons learned will give advice to foster durably the adoption of the CDIO standards and to be prepared for a deeper continuous improvement based on a more agile iterative cycle in order to align more regularly with accreditation requirements.