The Wireless Revolution: Teaching Advanced Techology to Diverse Audiences

在过去十年中，先进技术，特别是信息技术，以惊人的速度渗透到日常生活中。在未来的几十年里，这些技术将影响并改变当前和未来几代学生的个人和工作生活。这不仅适用于开发这项技术的SMET学科的学生，也适用于跨越学术界广度的许多学科的学生。所有学生中的很大一部分需要学习这些技术，以便进行他们的职业生涯，并在一个将由先进技术定义的时代作为知情公民生活。此外，SMET学生需要了解技术在经济、政治、社会和商业中的非技术含义，以及这些非技术领域的活动对技术的相应影响。该项目通过开发适合于向本科学生教授先进技术主题的教学方法和教学材料来满足这些需求，这些学科不仅包括SMET学科，还包括美术、人文和社会科学。这种方法利用了当今学生在计算机和数学方面的较高素养，提供具有技术内容的课程材料，但也着眼于技术在塑造社会和商业方面的更大作用。该项目特别关注电信技术，以利用首席研究员的经验，在他最近开发的课程“无线革命：21世纪的电信”中向普林斯顿大学的本科生教授这些材料。这门课程涵盖了无线技术、社会、经济和政治方面的内容，非常成功地吸引了来自整个大学的大量不同的听众。这种对学科的整体方法，以及SMET和非SMET学生在同一教室的教学，对所有参与的学生都产生了显著的教育效益。当然，虽然世界各地都在广泛地教授电信，但几乎没有可用的材料来全面地教授这门学科，特别是对本科层次的混合受众。这使得“无线革命”的模式很难输出到其他机构，甚至其他教师。这部分是由于这一领域非常动态的性质，这使得传统的文本材料不够充分，因为它需要非常迅速地更新。部分原因还在于，要充分解决这一问题，并统一挑战兴趣各异的学生，需要学科的广度。到目前为止，“无线革命”课程已经通过使用客座讲师解决了这个问题，这一解决方案不一定适用于其他大学或教师。该项目的主要目标是开发有用的教学材料，以解决这一领域的广度和活力。这些材料结合了主题相对稳定的传统教科书格式和更动态的主题的基于web的资源。这一发展的目标是使这门课程的成功模式能够被普林斯顿的其他教师以可持续的方式使用，并输出到其他机构。这些材料的范围将从无线通信延伸到一般的电信领域，因此这些主题将适合更多学生和机构的需要和兴趣。这些教学材料的可更新性和灵活性将允许其内容随着新的电信技术的兴衰而逐年变化。这将进一步允许内容因机构而异，因为不同的教师可能希望强调该领域的不同方面。最后，希望这一发展将为其他先进技术的整体教学提供一个模式。

The penetration of advanced technologies, and in particular information technologies, into every day life has proceeded at a breathtaking pace over the past decade. Such technologies will touch and transform the personal and working lives of current and future generations of students for many decades to come. This is true not only for students in the SMET disciplines who are developing this technology, but also for students in the many disciplines spanning the breadth of academia. A significant fraction of all students need to learn about such technologies in order to conduct their professional lives and to live as informed citizens in an age that will be defined by advancing technologies. Moreover, SMET students need to learn about the non-technical implications of technology in economics, politics, society, and business, and about the corresponding influences of such non-technical spheres of activity on technology. This project addresses these needs by developing pedagogy and pedagogical materials suitable for teaching advanced technological subject matter to undergraduate students across a broad spectrum of academic discliplines, not only within SMET isciplines, but also within the fine arts, humanities, and social sciences. This approach takes advantage of the greater computer and mathematical literacy of today's students to offer course material with technical substance, but also with a view toward the greater role of technologies in shaping society and commerce. The project focuses particularly on telecommunications technology, in order to exploit the Principal Investigator's experiences in teaching such material to Princeton undergraduates in his recently-developed course, "The Wireless Revolution: Telecommunications for the 21st Century." This course, which covers the technical, social, economic, and political aspects of wireless, has been very successful in attracting a large and diverse audience from across the University. This holistic approach to the subject, and the teaching of both SMET and non-SMET students in the same classroom, has resulted in significant educational benefits for all of the students involved. Although telecommunications is, of course, widely taught worldwide, there is little available material for the teaching of the subject in a holistic manner, and particularly to a mixed audience at the undergraduate level. This makes it difficult to export the model of "The Wireless Revolution" to other institutions, or even to other instructors. This is due in part to the very dynamic nature of the field, which renders conventional textual materials inadequate because it needs to be updated very quickly. It is also partly due to the breadth of disciplines needed to adequately address the subject and to uniformly challenge students with very diverse interests. This difficulty has been addressed in the "Wireless Revolution" course thus far through the use of guest lecturers, a solution which is not necessarily portable to other universities or instructors. The principal goal of this project is to develop useful pedagogical materials that can address both the breadth an dynamism of this field. These materials combine the traditional textbook format, where the subject matter is relatively stable, with Web-based resources for the more dynamic subject matter. The objective of this development is to allow the successful format of this course to be used in a sustainable way by other instructors at Princeton, and to be exported to other institutions. The scope of these materials will reach beyond wireless communications to the field of telecommunications in general, so that the subject matter will fit the needs and interests of a greater number of students and institutions. The updateable and flexible nature of these pedagogical materials will allow for the content to shift from year to year as new telecommunications technologies wax and wane. This will further allow for the content to vary from institution to institution, as different instructors may wish to emphasize different aspects of the field. Finally, it is hoped that this development will provide a model for the holistic teaching of other advanced technologies to broad undergraduate audiences.