Preparing Undergraduate Engineering Students for the Internet of Things
Preparing Undergraduate Engineering Students for the Internet of Things
复制标题
为工程本科生准备物联网做好准备
DOI：
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发表时间：
2016
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Samuel J. Dickerson
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Samuel J. Dickerson
设计将成为物联网（IoT）一部分的技术需要广泛技术领域的知识，包括模拟和数字通信、信息理论、网络协议、微控制器和电子学、电磁学等。这一学科的广度与电气和计算机工程课程日益狭窄的重点背道而驰，并且报名参加涵盖这一跨度的课程对学生来说往往是不实际的。在试图让学生为物联网做好准备的过程中，出现了一些问题：应该选择哪些主题，以及应该在课程的哪里向他们展示这些主题？我们在什么情况下向他们介绍这些主题？此外，我们应该如何以一种可访问的方式向学生传授物联网知识，同时保持足够的覆盖深度，让学生对自己为该领域的未来做出贡献的能力充满信心？我们通过修改我们的入门计算机网络课程来解决这些问题，将所有选定的主题都与物联网相结合。我们的方法是通过无线网络的过去和现在的演变，从早期的无线电通信和蜂窝网络，中短程无线计算机网络，然后到有源和无源RFID网络的学生。每种特定的网络类型并没有被广泛覆盖，而是从每个网络中选择并深入覆盖了一些关键技术，从而为学生创建了物联网技术和方法的概念“工具箱”。沿着，通常不包括在传统的网络课程，但重要的物联网，如微控制器接口，天线设计和RFID能量收集原理的主题介绍给学生。在本文中，这一新开发的课程及其内容的详细概述。此外，我们还展示了课程的结构如何使其特别适合于解决更具挑战性的ABET学生成果之一，以评估工程解决方案在全球和社会背景下的影响。最后，我们在多大程度上实现我们的预期学习目标是使用学生意见调查和学生工作的直接评估结果进行评估。
Designing technology that will be part of the Internet of Things (IoT) requires knowledge from a broad spectrum of technical areas including analog and digital communications, information theory, networking protocols, microcontrollers and electronics, electromagnetics, and more. That breadth of subject matter runs counter to the increasingly narrow focus of Electrical and Computer Engineering programs and enrolling in courses that cover that span is often not practical for students. In trying to prepare students for the IoT, some questions that arise are: Which topics should be selected and where in the curriculum should those topics be presented to them? In what context do we present the topics to them? Also, how should we teach students about IoT in a way that is accessible, while maintaining enough depth of coverage that students have confidence in their ability to contribute to the future of the field? We’ve addressed these questions by revamping our introductory computer networking course, gearing all of the selected topics towards the IoT. Our approach is to take the students through the evolution of wireless networks past and present, starting from early radio communication and cellular networks, to medium and short range wireless computer networks and then to active and passive RFID networks. Each specific network type is not covered extensively, but rather a few key technologies from each network are selected and covered in depth, thereby creating a conceptual “toolbox” of IoT techniques and methods for the student. Along the way, topics typically not included in traditional networking courses, but important to the IoT, such as microcontroller interfaces, antenna design and RFID energy harvesting principles are introduced to the students. In this paper, a detailed overview of this newly developed course and its content is presented. In addition, we show how the structure of the course makes it especially well-suited to address one of the more challenging ABET student outcomes to assess, outcomes dealing with the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context. Finally, the degree to which we are achieving our desired learning objectives is evaluated using the results of student opinion surveys and a direct assessment of student work.