This paper describes primarily the engineering design procedure used to develop the Interfaculty Offshore Technology MSc-level curriculum at the Delft University of Technology. Its resulting content is discussed globally. Industrial as well as student reactions to the program have been heart-warming.
This paper describes how the principles of engineering design have been applied very specifically to design an Interfaculty Offshore Engineering (or Offshore Technology) curriculum within the Delft University of Technology.
Technology is used in this context to refer to university-level engineering and its creative science background as opposed to the training for a technologist as one who simply carries out more routine technician tasks. Offshore Technology has been defined by the second author (Vugts, 1994) as being characterized by 5 simultaneous features:
The systematic application of sciences and other knowledge for practical purposes. In which these applications:
Are at sea away from the coast.
Are at a more or less fixed location.
Are influenced by the environment, but do not usually influence that environment.
Are used to exploit natural resources or serve a public need.
No-one can know all there is to know about everything. Indeed, the designers of the lOT curriculum used a matrix to match topics to be studied on one axis to levels of intellectual development along a second axis.
One of the first steps in the design of any engineered object - including this curriculum is to define and agree upon its functional performance requirements. In the current case this means defining the abilities lOT graduates are expected to acquire at the university. In a most abstract sense, IOT graduates can be expected to demonstrate abilities including:
