To be able to successfully pursue a future career within engineering, students need to acquire not only disciplinary knowledge but also generic skills to become professionals. The CDIO model provides a foundation of generic skills that can be expected by the students’ future employers. This paper presents pros and cons when integrating generic skills in disciplinary projects and is based on surveys and interviews with students and teachers on two integrated courses, Project management and Interactivity in smart environments, on an integrated five-year Master of Science program at Umeå University.
The results show that integrating two courses to give disciplinary meaning to projects make the students maintain their motivation during the course in Project management. In addition, the integration of the courses led to more time for the students for the actual project work. Lastly, both students and teachers also had the possibility to provide a better formal project structure on the disciplinary course. However, the results also show that the confusion among the students increased due to different requirements in each course. Thus, a high level of communication and a holistic view among the involved teachers is desirable to improve the overall success in course integration.