“Four Integrations and Four Forces” for Emerging Engineering Course Groups: A Case Study of Industrial Software Talent Development
Abstract
This study examines how interdisciplinary industrial‐software education was implemented at an application‐oriented university through a longitudinal institutional case study with an embedded historical‐cohort comparison. Evidence collected from 2014 to the end of the 2025–2026 spring semester included curriculum documents, platform and project records, competition and collaboration records, institutional surveys, and de‐identified course‐attainment and semester‐1 baseline‐grade data. The proposed Four Integrations and Four Forces framework was operationalized through a Foundation–Empowerment–Scenario curriculum architecture, an Engineering–Engineering Integration mechanism connecting operational and information technologies in authentic tasks, and a Four‐Party and Six‐Sharing university–industry collaboration mechanism. To provide course‐level evidence, Fundamentals of Low‐Code Technology was examined as a representative implementation case. A 2024‐entry cohort (n = 41) was compared with a 2025‐entry cohort (n = 40), while the instructor, platform, contact hours, course objectives, and assessment procedures remained unchanged. Overall course‐objective attainment was 0.624 (SD = 0.054) in the earlier cohort and 0.778 (SD = 0.056) in the later cohort, an unadjusted difference of 0.154 (95% CI [0.130, 0.178], Hedges’ g = 2.80, Welch p < 0.001). After adjustment for semester‐1 Python and mathematics grades and their cohort interactions, the cohort difference at the pooled mean baseline scores was 0.157 (95% CI [0.131, 0.184], HC3 p < 0.001). The later cohort experienced enterprise‐linked scenarios, project‐based teaching, and a smart‐course environment. Because the cohorts were non‐randomized and adjustment was limited to observed baseline grades, the results remain associational. The case nevertheless demonstrates a feasible task‐level approach to connecting industrial mechanisms with computational technologies in interdisciplinary curricula.