FAQs

TEDI-London is a design‑led engineering institution co-founded by the three PLuS Alliance partners – Arizona State University, King’s College London and UNSW Sydney.

Opening for students in September 2021, TEDI-London will offer a new type of engineering education for future engineers. Our flexible, project‑based B.Eng and M.Eng degrees will empower students to become independent, curious learners with a global, future‑focused outlook. As well as offering students an innovative new way to study engineering, the vision has been developed to attract students from diverse backgrounds to consider engineering as an option for study. With a global shortage of engineers, attracting more people to the profession is paramount to ensure engineered solutions to global challenges. TEDI-London will do this.

The TEDI-London campus is based in Canada Water – South East London, only two underground stops away from London Bridge. We are working closely with architects Hawkins/Brown to develop a sustainable, bespoke and modular campus that will have a range of amenities including an event space to showcase student work/projects, makerspaces with latest technologies (such as 3D Printers), rooms for study spaces, and a café for socialising.

TEDI-London’s Global Design Engineering degree (B.Eng and M.Eng) is a general engineering programme that bridges many disciplines of engineering, including mechanical, electrical and electronic, civil, environmental, and product design.

Learn more on our course page.

TEDI-London has been granted new degree awarding powers from the Higher Education Regulator – the Office for Students.

This means students joining in September 2021 will be awarded a TEDI-London degree upon graduation.

At TEDI-London we welcome students/learners from any academic discipline backgrounds, each application will be considered on an individual basis, in which we will be looking for the demonstration of our ‘triple A’ criteria: Attitude, Aptitude and Ability.

Applicants may come from a wide range of backgrounds including A-levels, IB Diploma or Career-related Programme, BTEC, and T-Levels and from those in employment looking to up-skill or cross-train into the engineering and design field.

The following criteria is intended as a guide to help you gauge if TEDI-London is for you:

• A minimum of level 6 at GCSE Maths (Grade B for students sitting GCSEs before 2018)
• A minimum of level 5 at GCSE English
• If studying A Levels, IB, BTEC (or any post 16 education) on track for 120 UCAS points or equivalent
• To forgo our numeracy test (see below) A Level (or equivalent) Maths Grade C or higher

This is ONLY for comparison; we encourage anyone interested in studying at TEDI-London to talk to our student advisors as we consider a much wider range of factors than just exam results when making offers. Tell us your background so we can guide you.

The TEDI-London curriculum is over 80% project-based learning – supported by our bespoke virtual learning environment, our ‘Learning Tree’, as well as by academics and industrial partners as coaches and mentors, master classes, pop-up tutorials and workshops. The remainder of the curriculum is based on a personal and professional portfolio, with students reflecting on their progression towards becoming a professional engineer, and an ‘integrated’ examination applying learning from the year to a real-world industrial problem.

The curriculum has been co-designed with employers to ensure that the content you learn and skills you develop are in conjunction with what industry needs from graduates.

The Learning Tree delivers a relevant, engaging and dynamic knowledge base to students through a series of packets of learning – our nodes. A node is a 3-hour block of online interactive, responsive content that equips students with a solid foundation for the technical skills gained within their projects. These nodes are accessible anytime, and encourages self-paced, flexible learning – giving you the autonomy to choose topic areas you want to delve into and find out more about.

All pre-requisite understanding, including Maths and Physics will be made available to students through the Learning Tree before the course begins.
Independent learning will be supported by a personalised tutor, and academics will be available to support learning. At TEDI-London we recognise that how we learn is just as important to what we learn.

You will be taught in groups of no more than 30 students, but your project groups will be much smaller – around 5 per team. Academics will assign teams so you will have the opportunity to work with a range of classmates throughout your programme.

There will be a mixture of individual and group projects that allow students to develop teamwork, problem solving, project management and leadership skills in addition to developing their technical competence and critical thinking.

Projects will be developed around key themes or disciplines such as computing and robotics, smart cities, energy and sustainability. All students will undertake significant individual projects in years 3 and 4, that can be done in collaboration with industry.

Recent summer school projects exemplify the types of projects TEDI-London degree students will study.

A water filtration project explored the possibility to turn water from Canada Water, (a flooded old dock near campus), into a community drinking fountain; the citizen hub project developed prototypes for an information hub that the community could access for updates on travel, weather, local events etc.; and lastly the rehabilitation device team engineered a solution to support patients in long-term repetitive rehabilitation exercises.

These projects address the fundamental challenges of a global, interconnected society – sustainable water, (energy and food), equality of access to information, and supporting an ageing population.

This need to provide solutions for global problems will drive the TEDI-London projects that students will work on.

Our 2020 summer school students worked to provide British Land, the developers behind the Canada Water Masterplan, with solutions to ensure a dementia-friendly community in their future plans.

While accommodation won’t be a part of our campus, TEDI-London can provide a list of recommended accommodation providers, suiting a range of budgets, for students who require accommodation.  See our accommodation page for more info. 

We provide a broad range of services to help ensure that you can achieve in your studies and support you in wider aspects of student life, such as with your health and wellbeing, your finances and your future career. The TEDI-London Student Hub is your one-stop shop for support, guidance and accessing our services. Staff here will give you advice on a range of topics including academic support, wellbeing and welfare, finance, accommodation, and can signpost you to relevant support within and outside TEDI-London. Our Wellbeing Service incorporates Counselling, Therapy and Mental Health mentoring, and you can access this specialist level of support throughout your time with us.

You can apply through UCAS and you can apply directly to us.

UCAS codes below: 

BEng Course code – TL01 

MEng Course code – TL02 

Institution code – T24 

Please visit our direct applications page if you’d like to apply directly.

You will be assessed through a combination of coursework reports, presentations, posters, individual portfolios and examinations.

This is a full-time programme, we expect you to commit approximately 40 hours a week. In this time, you will have a minimum of 12 hours per week facilitated study in the makerspaces, which is timetabled and led by our academic team. The remaining time is for self-directed study, group work, masterclasses, and meetings with personal tutors and mentors.

Generally, yes, but there is inherent flexibility in the programme due to the nature of the Learning Tree and approach to learning.

TEDI-London will operate a ‘sticky campus’ – an environment in which students will learn, collaborate, and receive guidance from peers and mentors. Project work may be based at TEDI-London – or in industry – but the campus will remain a central focus for student life. Students will be expected to attend TEDI-London in a similar way that modern employees engage with the workplace – how they develop their days will depend on arranged contact time with mentors, coaches and their project teams.

Whilst the planned nature of the campus will expect students to attend regularly, the Learning Tree will facilitate students being able to study at home, or off-site, once again reflecting the nature of modern working and empowering students from diverse backgrounds (such as those with caring commitments) to access education at TEDI-London.

Scheduled activities will be planned over four days to allow students to explore extracurricular pursuits. The TEDI-London team will strive to make studying as accessible as possible. Exploring how projects can be more accessible to part-time learning will be part of the curriculum development process.

Not yet but the programme is designed so that it can be offered part-time in the future.

Design engineers can be employed across a range of industries including aerospace, automotive, manufacturing, civil, environmental (sustainability), bio-medical (computer engineering) and more. You’ll acquire lots of transferable business, communication and product design skills too.

TEDI-London’s innovative curriculum and pedagogy set it apart from other engineering programmes in the UK. Delivered through projects and supported by a cutting-edge virtual learning environment (VLE), the approach to teaching and student support will make engineering accessible to a more diverse range of candidates.

The VLE or ‘Learning Tree,’ the TEDI-London online matrix of topics and modules allows for students from a variety of backgrounds to complete the degree. Students can work through the skills and knowledge they need to acquire according to need.

TEDI-London students will be expected to take responsibility for their own learning and the Learning Tree will support them to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to complete the projects and graduate as a professional, highly skilled engineer.

The curriculum for TEDI-London is being designed in consultation with the three founding universities. Other influencers on the curriculum will come from partners in industry, government and our students. The majority of the degree will be delivered through hands-on projects, underpinned by self-directed Learning Tree modules. The dynamic curriculum will have a foundation of engineering principles, but largely will be driven by partner-inspired projects. The curriculum will be informed by research undertaken at the founding partner universities and elsewhere, ensuring the academic learning is at the forefront of current knowledge.

Self-paced online learning underpins the project-based learning done in conjunction with industry or other community stakeholders. Students are expected to complete the online curriculum as well as the projects. The online modules will be networked allowing students to progress through various aspects of the programme, including taking appropriate nodes to support their upcoming projects.

The TEDI-London pedagogy incorporates elements of design, business, social science and communications to give students a broader set of skills. Students will have the opportunity to pursue various projects which will be attached to industry and other partner needs but offering a variety of learning opportunities.

TEDI-London will stand for The Engineering Design Institute, London. We are in the process of developing the organisation to apply to use the word ‘institute’.

TEDI-London has been co-founded by three global universities. King’s College London, Arizona State University and UNSW Sydney.

King’s College London is regularly one of the top 50 universities in the world, according to various global league tables, and one of the oldest in England – founded in 1828/1829.

Arizona State University is recognised as the US’s most innovative university – ahead of MIT and Stanford. In addition, it also leads the US and is top five in the world for advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals including global impact on poverty and hunger, developing solutions for clean water and energy and promoting gender equality.

UNSW Sydney is, like King’s, also regularly in the top 50 universities globally and its engineering faculty is ranked as Number One globally in THE (Times Higher) and QS Rankings.

Our degree programmes have been designed to meet the accreditation requirements of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Institution of Engineering Designers.

Full accreditation is subject to application and approval which can take place once TEDI-London has students in their final year of study. This is the usual process for accreditation. If accreditation is granted it will be backdated so that it applies to students who have studied the programme in its first years.

We have been working with companies on programme and curriculum content to ensure it meets and aligns with their industry needs. We have been doing this through an ongoing series of workshops with industry and a Strategic Industry Advisory Group.

On our Advisory Group we have very senior representation from: Waterman Group, Arup, Citrix, UtterBerry, Transport for London, NSAR and Hawkins\Brown, Royal Academy of Engineering.

At our industry curriculum workshops we have been working with people from: American Express, Microsoft, Jacobs, Sir Robert McAlpine, British Land, Arup, Waterman Group, Network Rail, Buro Happold, Hawkins\Brown, PTS Consulting, Infineon Technologies, Tech London Advocates, NMI Electrical Systems, Mimx5, TecQuipment, Crypto Quantique, Makerversity, Royal Academy Engineering, Think Radio, NSAR, Hosokawa Micron.

We have also worked with industry professionals for our summer schools, with them inputting on projects, mentoring, masterclasses and pitch presentations. Organisations industry professionals came from include: British Land, Hawkins Brown, Microsoft, Alzheimer’s Disease International, Engineers Without Boarders, Maccreanor-Lavington, BRE, McKinsey, Waterman Group, AKT II.

We have close relations with the organisations above and have ongoing conversations about their desire to mentor, deliver masterclasses and work on projects with TEDI-London Students.

Our course equips you for a placement and is designed to facilitate this in the final year of study.

£28,050

We aim for a 50/50 international domestic student cohort, although recognise that in our early years this may very much be driven by Covid travel restrictions.

We provide several services to help to ensure that you can achieve in your studies and wider aspects of student life such as your health and wellbeing and your future career.

There are several ways that we can help you outside of your studies. The TEDI-London Student Hub is your one-stop shop for support and guidance. Staff here will give you all the information you need and access to all the services available. Your Personal Tutor and Programme Administrator will also be your first point of contact. Our Wellbeing Service incorporates Counselling, Therapy and Mental Health mentoring, and you can access this specialist level of support throughout your time with us.

We want to support everyone to achieve and will take additional steps if you declare a disability or specific learning difference to us.

When you declare a specific disability or learning difference to us, our Education Support team will contact you directly to organise any necessary assistance and can help you with submitting requests for support from other organisations, for example the Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA).

We also offer one-to-one support as required to meet reasonable adjustments. You will be able to find more information about this via the Student Hub.

Although the learning content will be accessible via our virtual learning environment – The Learning Tree – TEDI-London does not offer the distance learning option, as student attendance is required to carry out onsite practical projects and assignments.

TEDI-London is open to anyone who wants to study engineering. We are looking for students who are self-motivated, enjoy a challenge and want to improve the quality of life in the world. The TEDI-London philosophy follows the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and many projects will align with those goals, such as maintaining sustainable cities and communities, good health and well-being, affordable and clean energy, climate action etc. TEDI-London engineers can make a difference!

Research suggests the pedagogy and approach used at TEDI-London creates a learning environment that is more inclusive and therefore more likely to appeal to a range of incoming students. This appeal underpins our mission to help close the international skills gap for engineers.

We particularly welcome applications from mature applicants and those from groups not traditionally represented on university programmes and/or in engineering.

Applicants may come from a wide range of backgrounds including those employment looking to up-skill or cross-train into the engineering and design field.

King’s College London Students’ Union is an independent charitable organisation existing solely to further the interests of its members and govern over the more than 300 student societies and activity groups at King’s.   

 TEDI-London students will have access to a range of King’s College London facilities during their studies with us. This includes KCL Student Union clubs and societies, bars and cafés, plus the gym, library and accommodation, so you will really get to have the best of both with an exciting range of extracurricular opportunities around your hands-on engineering studies. 

TEDI-London students will also have affiliate access to the King’s library, though our resources will be online. 

We call our lab facilities ‘makerspaces’ and they are places for ideas, creation and, ultimately, making things. There will be four makerspaces that allow for different types of hands-on learning gained from our projects. From small prototyping and 3D printing through to larger scale equipment, the spaces will be set up to include everything needed to ensure the projects can be progressed from concept to delivery.

The TEDI-London modular campus is built around a core in which the stairs and a lift are based. Unisex WC’s and an accessible WC, are provided at each level while the ground floor accommodates showers, lockers and changing facilities. On the ground floor we find a reception, a double height flexible space which can be used for exhibitions and events, a makerspace for fabrications and a large café and networking space for students and staff.

The first floor of the campus provides two makerspaces / teaching rooms and an office for TEDI-London employees. The first-floor accommodation is located around a double height space with the perimeter of the atrium open below.

On the 2nd floor the modules step back which provides generous communal roof terraces which can be used as communal space during good weather. The terraces can be accessed via the core of each building as well as by shared external stairs. On the second floor you can also find the fourth makerspace, a student common room and a flexible bookable room that can be used for several purposes including personal reflection.

Externally there will be a cycle store making it easy to travel to TEDI-London by bike.

Our founding partners are three leading global universities.

King’s College London is regularly one of the top 50 universities in the world, according to various global league tables, and one of the oldest in England – founded in 1828/1829.

Arizona State University is recognised as the US’s most innovative university – ahead of MIT and Stanford. In addition, it also leads the US and is top five in the world for advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals including global impact on poverty and hunger, developing solutions for clean water and energy and promoting gender equality.

UNSW Sydney is, like King’s, also regularly in the top 50 universities globally and its engineering faculty is ranked as Number One globally in THE (Times Higher) and QS Rankings.

Students at TEDI-London will benefit from the broad and deep knowledge base of our founders, all of whom have been involved in the direction and development of our programme. IN the final year of study (BEng and MEng), TEDI-London students will be able to study a semester abroad at either of our overseas founding partners, or indeed with King’s. course is designed to facilitate this in the final year of study.

TEDI-London is also working on a partnership with King’s SU, for TEDI-London students to have affiliate membership.

The Learning Tree is the online matrix of topics that TEDI-London students will use to gain the subject knowledge necessary to complete their practical projects and ultimately, their degrees. Comprised of nodes that build up to modules, the Learning Tree is delivered through a self-paced virtual learning environment (VLE).

The tree will contain branches related to all the traditional engineering disciplines without covering the detail of a specialised degree. Additional branches will relate to design thinking, leadership, financial management and economics, as well as social sciences and philosophy. Ethics and its study will be interwoven in the courses and in the projects.

See affiliate membership of King’s SU.

TEDI-London has been founded to train a new type of engineer and our learning and teaching style will require our academics to be teaching excellent and therefore wholly focused on student experience and support. We will have access to the very latest research and cutting-edge knowledge through our founders.

There are individual projects at the end of both the BEng and MEng that students could use to explore research.

TEDI London is funded by its three founding partners under a joint venture agreement. Funds from the partners do not come from student tuition fees or taxpayer money.

All the projects will be based in TEDI-London, but there will be opportunities to visit industrial partners during collaborative projects. Although there are no formal placements at present, major final year projects may be based in industry for up to 20 weeks. These may also take place abroad. 

Our course equips students for a placement and is designed to facilitate this in the final year of study.  This could potentially be abroad, subject to appropriate due diligence. 

At TEDI-London employability is integrated through the entire programme.  

 

The process of developing relevant, high-performing graduates, requires a wide array of skills and competencies. In partnership with industry and engineering bodies, our employability services work with the academic team to map out career pathways, including the knowledge and skills needed at each step and the required tools and practices that will be developed and delivered through our online and offline careers provision. 
 

The Project Based approach at TEDI-London means you have continual hands-on engagement with industry/employers from start to finish of your degree. This will be underpinned and supported by our employability services through a multitude of content delivery and activities in Skills Profiling and Mentoring, Employability and Events, Personal Employability Development, and an Integrated Dashboard and Employability Platform 

Students at TEDI-London will benefit from the broad and deep knowledge base of our founders, all of whom have been involved in the direction and development of our programme. In the final year of study (BEng and MEng), TEDI-London students will be able to study a semester abroad at either of our overseas founding partners, or indeed with King’s. Our course is designed to facilitate this in the final year of study. 

 

With our project based approach, TEDI-London students are professionals in training and will learn ‘hands on’ from day one on projects that are real life challenges co-designed and co-delivered with employers. Our course equips students for a placement and is designed to facilitate this as an integral part of the final year of study (see also comment below). This contrasts to the usual case, where a placement year usually extends the course by a year and the remainder of the course is predominantly lecture-based.  

Also, our course differs from degree apprenticeships, for which apprentices are employees and spend 80% of their time with their employer with only 20% of their time spent on campus. Additionally, at TEDI-London, students will be working with multiple employers, rather than just one. TEDI-London will be working with many organisations across multiple projects, which provides a wider experience and broader exposure to potential employers – it also enables our students to build a portfolio of project experience and delivery to present, reference and discuss at job interviews. TEDI-London projects can take a future focus and innovation approach.