Course change as a Darwinian process

Continuing Professional Development programs provide access to the industry professionals who are developing new and complex engineering systems. Through these programs, the evolving features of systems and the background knowledge and skills deemed essential by the industry can be derived and used as the basis for academic program updating. Results from an executive training program on managing large systems are presented to show that some courses require continuous modification based on two inter-dependent components: a deterministic structure and an opportunistic or Darwinian experience-based rapid adaptation. The interplay of the two components has been applied to the training courses themselves and the principles have been extended to managing change in technical academic courses in general.