A new qualitative metric for assessing advanced graduate courses in computer engineering and science

Presents a philosophy underlying the design of a few advanced and graduate courses at ASU in the subdisciplines of HDLs, communications networks, computer-aided design of digital systems, distributed systems, distributed algorithms, and modeling and simulation. The philosophy has given rise to a new metric-the extent and significance of the knowledge "discovered" by the students, towards evaluating the quality of such courses. Discovery refers to the knowledge that is brought out into the open by the student for himself/herself, and it is significant in that it becomes an integral part of the individual who not only gains invaluable insight and confidence in the subject matter but can improvise, reason, and apply it to other areas in creative ways. The article illustrates the application of the metric through a number of actual cases encountered during teaching at ASU.