Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 2558

Experiences Using Undergraduate Students to Develop Information Technology Course Curriculum

Stephen R. Renshaw, Aaron Dockter, C. Richard G. Helps, Joseph J. Ekstrom Information Technology, Brigham Young University

Abstract

Undergraduate students have been used to help develop the course curriculum in various Information Technology courses ranging from beginning digital electronics to networking. This development has taken various forms including directed production of lab modules, production of supplemental material, and researching an in-depth subject then teaching it to peers.

The curriculum development experiences are shown from three perspectives; first from the perspective of the faculty member advising the development, second from the perspective of the student developing the material, and third from the perspective of students using the material for learning.

The actual curriculum developed from these experiences contributes well to the learning environments but the major learning is taking place by the students doing the development. It is well known that teaching is one of the most powerful learning mechanisms. Mentoring environments facilitate the learner as a teacher. Future work of using undergraduate students to develop curriculum suggest a move towards a faculty and peer mentoring environment.

I. Introduction

The use of graduate students to teach a class or help develop course curriculum is very commonly done but the use of undergraduate students for this purpose is rarely done. The Information Technology (IT) program at Brigham Young University has been developed over the past three years and was opened as a major in fall 2001. It was recognized that many of the undergraduate students were transferring into IT with experience from Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Information Systems. Further it was realized that this experience could be used to build superior curriculum in IT based much on the problems these students have seen in the programs they transferred from. If similar problems existed in the IT program the students with experience would recognize and identify them if asked.

Through interviews it has been found that students are very perceptive as to what they don’t like in a program and deem this as what is wrong with a program. “Although opinions on these

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Helps, C. R., & Renshaw, S., & Ekstrom, J. (2003, June), Experiences Using Undergraduate Students To Develop Information Technology Course Curriculum Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--11641