Principles of Elective Design with Industry-Institute Collaboration

Along with core courses, an education program is usually designed with discretionary elective courses for professional advancement. It is naturally inherent that most electives' course contents need periodic apprise to persevere to the state-of-art. The pace at which industries adapt to new technologies is considerably rapid as compared to the teaching and learning that happens at the university. However, an elective design needs an equal role and support to be played by the industry and the institute. This paper proposes the design principles for an elective course, which envelopes from curriculum structure to evaluation methodologies. The principles are outlined to cover the design aspects, selection methodologies for the content and course materials, syllabus division to units, course learning outcomes, teaching pedagogy, industry principles, evaluation methodologies, and course learning attainment. Each principle is presented with an objective and deliberation. The intended principles were applied to the design and delivery of an elective – Semantic Web. The course, which was offered with an industry-institute collaboration, was opted by 125 students in the sixth semester. The paper further presents each of the principles as applied and delivered for the semantic web course. The course attainment with respect to course learning outcomes, student elective opt ratio, and the feedback obtained stand in favor of the proposed model. The principles can be applied to design the elective for enhanced learning experiences and make students industry-ready, which is one of the major objectives for introducing the electives.