Evaluating The Impact Of Real Time Systems Theory Course On A Multidisciplinary Embedded Systems Curriculum

The ChERT project is focusing on developing an embedded system curriculum with the following innovative features: (a) an interdisciplinary curriculum and (b) integration of research results into teaching. The design of embedded systems requires knowledge from many different disciplines. For this purpose, we have designed a sequence of interdisciplinary courses for imparting embedded systems design education. The course entitled “Real-time Systems Theory” is a part of this curriculum. This course directly imports ideas developed as part of our research in embedded systems. The aim of this course is to provide students with a strong theoretical foundation for designing and analyzing embedded systems. This paper will present the motivation for designing this course, the importance of material covered in the course, and the impact of this course on the overall curriculum. We will report our experience in teaching this course and the feedback obtained from the students. The impact of having students from many engineering disciplines taking this course will be discussed.