I Corps-L: Supporting System Design in ECE through an Internet of Things Game Authoring System

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Legacy award EEC 0530588 included a focus on teaching electrical and computer engineering (ECE) system design. To support system design thinking and learning, the project utilized student-designed interactive competitive activities. The current I-Corps L project expands on this and other awards to connect students in electrical and computer engineering programs across the country through mobile interactive competition design projects. The project seeks to create a nation-wide capstone program for ECE students, similar to exhibitions in other disciplines that are collaborative rather than competitive. Small-scale trials at Bucknell demonstrated the potential of this type of design for engaging students and teaching elements of system design across all levels of abstraction.The intent of this project is to link these competitive activities with learning since in order to compete, students have to create hardware and software. Since the competitive activity is integrally tied to design, the project has the potential to create rapid feedback on design choices, thus leading to more effective system design skills. Additionally, the project may opt to develop a commercial activity for purchase. Initial trials conducted to date reveal unique affordances between competitive activities and engineering design. The interactive competitions depend as much upon stories and rules as the physical infrastructure (hardware and software) that supports play. Such activities have been defined as formal rule-based systems with variable and quantifiable outcomes in which different outcomes have different values to players. Players exert effort by both optional and negotiable activities to achieve favorable outcomes which brings an emotional stake. It is the player-centered and engaging characteristics of these competitive activities the project seeks to combine with the engineering design process. More specifically, the activities allow great flexibility in student design challenges so they become more adaptable to institution-specific learning outcomes and curricula. Changing the rules can significantly change the design parameters so that a large range of design projects are enabled even with a cost-effective and limited set of hardware and software. Furthermore, the activities can be placed in narratives drawn from many popular works relevant to STEM students and other learners, and thus have potential appeal to many audiences.