ABET 2000 Challenges in Curricular Compression: Fluids and Circuits - A Pilot $2+1+1$ Approach

by C.K. Skokan et al. IEEE Transactions on Education, August 2005 In response to a call from the National Science Foundation for curriculum reform and elimination of legacy materials in engineering curricula, the faculty at the Colorado School of Mines, Golden, has developed and offered a combined set of course modules in fluids and circuits. These modules consist of a two-credit interdisciplinary course in fundamentals, followed by two one-credit modules focusing on applications in fluids and in circuits, respectively. The course set reduces the overall number of credits from six to four through the $2+1+1$ format. The fundamentals course, consisting of two credits, is based on conservation and accounting principles for the concepts of mass, momentum, energy, and charge. Two applications modules, each of one credit, develop these ideas in the respective disciplines. During the study, four challenges to implementation were uncovered: faculty and administrative buy-in, textbook selection, logistics, and stakeholders' acceptance. Read more