Training engineers in real-time systems design: an integrated curriculum

With the increase in system complexity the specification and design of overall real-time applications based on electronic and computer systems need to think at higher levels of abstraction and to integrate new concepts and methods. Training engineers efficiently and correctly is a real challenge. This paper describes and justifies the curriculum developed at IRESTE, University of Nantes, to educate and train engineers in system design. A curriculum is shown as more than a collection of courses. Starting from the competence requirements needed by companies for their system designers, we identify the essential components of the education. We then explain the progressive education process we are following at IRESTE. The main idea is that our curriculum is fully based on the MCSE methodology which is a complete seamless system-level design process covering all the design phases from customer's requirements to the final product. The nature of our student projects is described.