Interdisciplinary Embedded System Design in Education

Professors at the De Nayer Instituut constantly try to improve and optimize their courses in the field of embedded system design. Three major observations came out of an analysis of the different embedded courses in our institute. The first observation was that each course used its own development platform. Secondly, the students spent a large amount of time just to get to know different platforms. The third observation was that a lot of students that graduated lacked the ability of thinking and working in an interdisciplinary way. This paper gives an overview of how the introduction of two new custom-made embedded platforms helped to reduce costs and the amount of time spent by students getting to know the platform. It also improved their ability to work interdisciplinary. The paper also describes how the two platforms are integrated into the different courses taught at the De Nayer Instituut.