Faculty collaboration and course coordination in geographically dispersed campuses

With a growing emphasis on vertical and horizontal integration of engineering curricula, there is a growing need for strong coordination among engineering courses. This paper outlines a coordination and collaboration model that has been developed as part of the NSF funded ECSEL initiative. This effort is currently implemented at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. The model has been implemented on a first-year design course taught at 19 campuses in the Penn State system. The model involves developing a competency-based course structure, identifying coordination team, identifying coordination mechanisms using appropriate technology, faculty development and incentives to sustain long-term coordination. At the core of the coordination and collaboration efforts are student driven activities, and it is these activities that will sustain this effort in the long-term. A large part of the student activities involves archival of student design work as electronic portfolios. These portfolios are shared with the feeder campuses which is a significant part of student-student, faculty-student and industry-student collaboration