Educational project and educational content: integration and interaction

There are three distinct teaching modes in the educational system: formal lectures, session with more active student participation and a mode alternating in-school coursework and out-of-school placement experience. In the Ecole Centrale de Lille (a graduate engineering school), an initial series of meetings brought together all those involved at all levels. Their aim was to define the type of engineer we intended to produce, i.e. a scientific and multidisciplinary engineer. This process led to the definition of seven final capacities, as well as to a redefinition and concomitant re-thinking of teaching methodologies and associated educational programmes and planning. In this paper, we show that combining these defined capacities with scientific knowledge leads to the required scientific capacities being identified. We present certain aspects of teaching methods, developed in an attempt to respond to these objectives.