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Session 2302

Systematic Course Design at The Aerospace Institute

Todd Mosher The Aerospace Corporation

ABSTRACT

A new course design methodology has been created to aid instructors at The Aerospace Institute, the education and training division of The Aerospace Corporation. This methodology’s heritage is an approach described in "The New Professor's Handbook" by Dr. Cliff Davidson and Dr. 1 Susan Ambrose that compares planning a course with planning a research project. For The Aerospace Institute this analogy has been modified to an analogy between course design and systems engineering, which is a concept very familiar to its instructors. This paper walks through this methodology and offers suggestions for implementation that should be useful in a variety of educational environments. Examples are provided throughout to illustrate the concepts.

INTRODUCTION

The Aerospace Institute was established in July 1994 to integrate key corporate educational resources toward The Aerospace Corporation vision to be the world’s leader in space technology, planning and system engineering. Since then as a part of their charter, The Aerospace Institute has been developing and offering courses for company personnel as well as the U.S. Air Force, The Aerospace Corporation’s principal customer.

One dilemma The Aerospace Institute has faced is how the wealth of technical expertise that is the corporation’s major asset can be translated into courses. Also as many of these courses have started into their second and third offerings, The Aerospace Institute has realized through firsthand experience that expertise in a subject, and even exceptional presentation skills, do not necessarily result in the ability to effectively teach a subject.

To address these issues a methodology that embodies an analogy between course design and system engineering has been created. This methodology’s heritage is an approach described in "The New Professor's Handbook" by Dr. Cliff Davidson and Dr. Susan Ambrose that compares 1 planning a course with planning a research project. For The Aerospace Institute this analogy has been modified to an analogy between course design and systems engineering, which is a concept very familiar to the various instructors involved in The Aerospace Institute. The remainder of this paper will discuss this methodology.

STEPS IN PLANNING A COURSE

Analogies can be a powerful method to illustrate a concept, especially when they relate something an audience knows to something it doesn’t know. The dilemma with The Aerospace

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Mosher, T. (1997, June), Systematic Course Design At The Aerospace Institute Paper presented at 1997 Annual Conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 10.18260/1-2--6808