An Industry-related Course Development for Mobile Communications Systems in Undergraduate Curriculum of Communications Engineering

Abstract

The huge and continuous evolution in mobile communications industry increases the popularity and importance of mobile communications sector in daily life of communities. This increases the jobs in this sector since 2000 and huge numbers of university graduates’ engineers are enrolled in working inside this field. However, the absence of industry-related mobile communications course has motivated Electrical Engineering Department at Mutah University to develop a new and unique course that satisfies the industry needs and reducing the gap between mobile industry and academia. This paper shows that the bachelor degree in communication engineering is the most disseminated electrical engineering major. Accordingly, the mobile communications modules (courses) in Jordanian universities are analyzed to highlight the gap with industry needs and evolutions. To highlight the industry expectation and the required skills from newly fresh graduate communications engineer, an online form is distributed among seniors, juniors and experts’ engineers in the industry. Finally, the new course objectives, context are established at Mutah University/BSc Communications Engineering course plan. The results of the course workshops and the feedback provided by students and industry representatives indicate that the developed course and its approach have achieved the goal.