Design and Assessment of a Multidisciplinary Course in Service Oriented Architecture

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is finding increasing acceptance in industry for the design of enterprise-scale, networked applications. However, opportunities to study SOA in appropriately interdisciplinary ways are currently lacking for college students. In this paper, we present the design of a graduate and upper division undergraduate level course that combines elements of business, engineering and computer science in a real-world-inspired approach. The design of the course is presented and motivated, objectives and expected outcomes defined, and assessment data from the initial offering of the course are given. An analysis of the elements of the course is provided, resulting in guidelines for the design of a relevant SOA course. Based on these results, a modified plan for a second offering is described.