Intracourses: Synergies In Combining Two Courses To Make A New One

We describe a new tool for curriculum design. By carefully choosing two traditional course subject areas that have a disciplinary thread in common, trimming both to their essential core topics using program outcomes as a guide, then combining the results, we create an “intracourse.” We give criteria for evaluating potential intracourse constituent pairs. We discuss alternative approaches to realizing the combination. Intracourses can be used to address several difficult curriculum design challenges. Rapid technological advances routinely create demands for new technical competencies within fixed engineering curriculum boundaries. Current trends toward increasing general education requirements reduce available time and other resources for specialized engineering courses. Intracourses allow for novel new curriculum design solutions in such constrained environments. Each intracourse also provides engineering students with direct experience in exploring the boundary between two traditional disciplines. Our methodology for formulating intracourses naturally provides measurement opportunities for assessment of program outcomes. Thus, a single intracourse can be designed to accomplish more than the sum of its parts. We give examples of intracourses formulated over the last several years along with successes and pitfalls encountered.