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

In the graduate schools across the US, the teaching of graduate courses continues to constitute a significant component of graduate education. This paper presents a philosophy that underlies the design of a few advanced graduate courses at Arizona State University in the sub-disciplines of hardware description languages, communications networks, computer-aided design of digital systems, distributed systems, distributed algorithms, and modeling and simulation. From the philosophy, a new metric emerges-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, through logical reasoning from the first principles, by the student for himself/herself. 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 paper illustrates the application of the metric through a number of actual cases encountered during teaching at ASU. It also presents a list of the desirable attributes of the underlying educational environment to ensure success in the design and delivery of such courses.