In just over a week I'll be starting to teach a new course to our current intake of BTEC National Diploma IT students. I was given a fairly open brief - I could choose any unit from the NDIT syllabus (PDF 1MB) that (a) isn't already scheduled and (b) doesn't need any special resources beyond the networked computers we already have in the classrooms.

However, the more I looked into the available units, the smaller my range of choices seemed to become. All the obvious ones had been nabbed already, and most of the rest involved things like assembling PC components or configuring networks (the kind of activities strictly prohibited by the college network support people). I really don't fancy the look of the "system justification" unit, so I reckon I'll be teaching "expert systems"

Luckily, I have had some experience with these things. I built my own forward/backward-chaining RETE implementation a year or two ago, although it is currently in a bit of a shaky state and really needs some tidying and polishing to be useful in a classroom setting. I've also tinkered with Jess which is luckily available free for academic use. I've even got a book about that one!

I still need to get the nod from my course leader, but once I start going I'll need to gather and prepare a lot of course material in a short space of time. As a note to myself, I'll start with this post from Simon at My hovercraft is full of eels.

In the meanwhile, if anyone can recommend any good sources, or instant course material, on this topic, I'll be very grateful. Thanks.