Developing a responsive & responsible curriculum for computer engineeringEDULEARN 2011

2-Jul-2012

Software Defined RadioResearch Group

Presentation by:

Simon WinbergDepartment of Electrical EngineeringUniversity of Cape Town

Pedagogical Innovations in Engineering Education

CapeTown

South Africa

Reporting on a ‘Curriculum refinement’ process for an engineering degree course

Introduction

Multiplestakeholders

Industry

Partners

ResearchPartnersEngineeringCouncil

DegreeRequiremen

ts

Four-year BSc in Electrical & Computer Engineering

Curriculum changes to accommodate:

Context

Responsiveness

in terms of industry needs

Responsibility in terms of fundamentals, Washington accord, Engineering council

New technologies

& tools

Cost-effective

solutions

Specializedapplications

How can we accommodate our industry partners’ needs while maintaining the requirements for other stakeholders (i.e., degree certification requirements as set out by the engineering council, etc.).

Main objective

Q: What parts of the curriculum are suitable for change to accommodateindustry needs?

Q: What parts can - or should - be left alone?

Research questions

Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Degree programme◦ Offered by the Department of Electrical

Engineering at the University of Cape Town◦ Follows more an electronics and special-purpose

computer systems design perspective (in contrast to the computer science approach)

Moment of background

What jobs does the degree lead to? …

Integrates

Hardware+

SoftwareDesign

Hardware Software

Jobs for ECE graduates

Digital computer circuitdesign

Embedded system& software design

Control system design

TelecomsDigital SignalProcessingprogramming

+ many others

Industry collaborators3 South African companies◦ 2x companies involved in development of special-

purpose high-end embedded systems & software◦ 1x company involved in development of software

for high performance computing applications

Industry & Research Collaborators

Industry collaborators Research collaborators: 2 South African research institutions

◦ Karoo Array Telescope Project (KAT): the South African part of the international Square Kilometre Array project)

◦ Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

Industry & Research Collaborators

Collaborations In terms of Software defined radio, radar, use of hardware description languages

Carried out as a part of a larger curriculum renewal project that concerns:◦ Updating courses to use up-to-date tools◦ Reducing duplication between courses◦ Re-evaluating service courses used and

provided◦ Time line mid-2009 Dec 2014

Methodology

the process …

For accommodating or industry partners’ needs

Methodology

1. Data gatheringMeetings, telephone,email archive

Refinement &Trade-offs

2. Analysing the dataMaking lists of points requested, identifying commonalities, prioritizing items, negotiating trade-offs

3. Refining the curriculumIdentify main courses to make changes to. Discuss curriculum requests with lecturer(s) involved. Report back tothe partners.

Results…

Types of knowledge related to most of collaborators’ requests

Level 3

Level 5

following approach described by Henson (2006)

Knowledge categories used to group collaborators’ requests

Desired graduatequalities

(effective/valuing)

Techniques gradsShould learn (cognitive/

comprehension)

Application contexts& problems

(cognitive/application)

Types of systems /projects students should do

(cognitive/application)

Important professionalqualities

(affective / organizing)

Henson’s Knowledge domain / knowledge level in parentheses

Resultsof prioritizing

requests

After negotiation with courselecturers and the industry

collaborators

All collaborators agreed that the fundamental ‘core knowledge’ of the computer engineering discipline needs to be ‘protected’ – regardless of immediate industry/technology needs

Finding #1:Protecting the Core

“… Typically, candidates are chosen not for experience in any single technology or environment, but for a strong grounding in the fundamental concepts”

(ind. collaborator 1)

core

Commonly discussed:Professional values & theunderpinning of professional expertise

Difficult to explain in clear terms – generally discussed as largely tacit qualities that a professional develops over time (‘a professional knows how to behave professionally’)

Finding #2: the need to impart

The essential professional expertise

“… taking responsibility …” (ind. collaborator 5)

“… able to do time-planning, Gantt charts, budgets…” (res. collaborator 3)

Incorporate problem-solving for particular application contexts – train students to use relevant tools for these contexts

Including simulated work conditions: e.g. reviewing designs, decision marking, leadership, design critique and peer assessment

Finding #3:Problem-solving in context

“… taking responsibility …” (ind. collaborator 5)

Assessing students’ assessment ability

A collection of specific tools and techniques were identified from the collaboration

Both industry & research partners recommended against specific training – they qualified requests with alternate approaches

Finding #4:Specific techniques and tools

“Our products are built with java…and a tomcat server. … Embedded coding in java is obviously not essential in the course, mastering embedded programming in C would be effective also.” (ind. collaborator 4)

visual modelling tool

Knowledge model for graduates

Recommendation for deciding curriculum changes to implement

breadth of know- ledge & flexibility

Implementing curriculum changes… Collaborators generally want graduates with

experience and skills that can be applied in a broad application contexts using a variety of tools

Towards:

Way forward…

depth

of d

isciplin

ary

know

ledge

‘T-shaped’ graduates *

* Rip 2004

Thank you!

SKA meerKAT (Karoo Array Telescope) project for SDRRG and RHINO funding

Xilinx for donations & support of RHINO project Texas Instruments for donation of development

resources and hardware SDRG team: thanks to Prof. Inggs, Dr. Langman,

Dr. Mishra, and the SDRG students

Acknowledgements

Rip, A., 2004, "Strategic research, post-modern universities and research training," Higher Education Policy, 17, pp. 153-166.

Shackelford, R., McGettrick, A., Sloan, R., Topi, H., Davies, G., Kamali, R., Cross, J., Impagliazzo, J., LeBlanc, R., and Lunt, B., 2006, "Computing curricula 2005: The overview report," ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, 38(1), pp. 456-457.

2002, "Agents for change: Bringing industry and academia together to develop career opportunities for young researchers. Policy Briefing 17, European Science Foundation, Stockholm (Sweden).

ACM, 2004, "Computer Engineering 2004 - Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer Engineering," Association for Computing Machinery.

Henson, K. T., 2006, Curriculum planning: Integrating multiculturalism, constructivism, and education reform, Waveland Pr Inc.

Selection of References

QUESTIONS?