A system engineering approach: Integrating technology into the classroom-based curriculum

Technology has become ubiquitous in the 21st Century, touching almost every aspect of our lives, our business and consumer activities, and our communications in professional, social, political and cultural communities. Yet it is still far from an easy task to integrate technology into curriculum design and development for enhanced classroom-based student learning. The integration of technology in the classroom-based curriculum has been random, ad hoc, isolated, and teacher-centered. The Learning System Engineering model used to develop online courses is instrumental as how to integrate technology in the online curriculum. However, the classroom-based higher education curriculum poses much more challenges than the online curriculum because the former has face-to-face classroom activities makes technology integration in the classroom-based curriculum in addition to online components. This paper will explore the use of the system engineering approach to integrating technology into developing the classroom-based higher education curriculum development that pays due attention to the online learning environments but goes far beyond them.