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Resources for Faculty About the Curriculum An essential feature of this approach is the use of learning community methodology through the engagement of interdisciplinary faculty teams who design the instructional activities that integrate the core and technical competencies. Further, students move through the program as a cohort, most often working in teams to complete and present projects. As such, the students learn both technical and academic skills and content along with other “soft skills” valued in the workplace, such as team building and critical thinking. The concurrent educational delivery aspect of the model mirrors industry's “just-in-time” (JIT) approach to product development. Rather than presenting theoretical concepts followed by application, the JIT approach encourages concurrent instruction in theory and application within realistic projects or problems which are based on the industry application examples. Each module includes instructional material and activities that are addressed by appropriate discipline faculty within separate courses, but this is coordinated according to both scope and sequence of instruction. For example, when operational amplifiers are taught in the Electronic Devices course, the English professor will address memo-writing techniques for describing specifications and characteristics of an instrumentation amplifier. At the same time, linear functions will be taught in the mathematics course, and the physics professor will deal with the analysis of electrical circuits in his/her course. Competency
with specific skills is measured by four levels of mastery: Introduce
(I), Develop (D), Master (M), and Reinforce (R). Starting with
(I) level in the first semester, material is reinforced throughout
to the last level (R). This so-called “spiral approach” reinforces
competencies as they are revisited each semester. Resources on the Web For additional models and details about the InET approach, consult the following resources: National
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