A Case Study Of Interdisciplinary Teaching At Kansas State University

At Kansas State University the Electrical and Computer Engineering department (EECE) and the Computing and Information Science department (CIS) have collaborated in developing with an NSF CRCD grant a series of embedded systems courses. In a minimum of credit hours, the CIS students learn more about the interconnection of hardware and its effect on software decisions and the EECE students learn more about computing theory especially real-time scheduling theory and verification. Either group could do this by taking normal courses but it would require many more credit hours of present day courses. These courses were designed for any engineering student to be able to take. The paper will present the gains obtained by the faculty and the students taking the courses as evaluated by an independent group. The possible disadvantages of this approach will be discussed, although we did not encounter many of them. Recommendations for other groups interested in developing multi-disciplinary courses are made.