Student Engagement in the Co-designing and Co-teaching a Cornerstone EECS Design and Implementation Course at National Taiwan University

International higher education policies and literature have called for students and faculty to collaborate effectively in the co-designing and co-teaching of curricula. In the fall of 2017, the Department of Electrical Engineering of National Taiwan University launched the "Creative Cornerstone Course Design for ICT1 and Engineering Education" course, which is a co-design course, to engage higher division and graduate students in co-creating and co-teaching the curriculum of a "Cornerstone EECS Design and Implementation" freshman course, which was a cornerstone course to be conducted in the spring of 2018. This paper presents the educational practice and learning outcomes of the co-design course. The implementation of the co-design course involved the following activities: (a) project- and team-based learning approaches, (b) active student partnership with teachers for designing the cornerstone course curriculum, and (c) preparatory cultivation of the students as teaching assistants for co-teaching. Learning outcome analysis indicated that freshman students significantly benefited in terms of their self-exploration of ICT-related subjects, basic professional knowledge, operational techniques, and confidence in self-learning when the cornerstone course was developed through co-designing.