Interdisciplinary curriculum development in electronics packaging using course segmentation

A seed project for using course segmentation to facilitate curriculum development in graduate education has been initiated with the support of the National Science Foundation. Courses are divided into credit-bearing segments offered over portions of a term (e.g. a three credit course may be divided into three one-credit courses each given over one-third of the term). Core segments are then used as building blocks of other courses (additional branch segments), thereby reducing the effort associated with introducing new courses. Segmentation provides other benefits including operating efficiency (enrolment in core segments can be increased, helping to justify lower enrolment specialized branches), and reducing curricular credit hour requirements by permitting students in particular curricula to take selected segments. The segmentation concept has been applied to an interdisciplinary curriculum initiative in electronics packaging by the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments.