Bringing J2ME industry practice into the classroom

33rd Annual Frontiers in Education, 2003. FIE 2003., 2003

This paper describes a dual-module application that allows educational content to be created for Mobile Computing environments, ofering the student mobility in the educational process. One of the modules of this application, developedfor use with conventional desktops. allows for the creation ofExercise Lists with Multiple Choice and True or False questions. The other module allows Exercise Lists generated by the application to be viewed and the exercises solved through devices that use Wireless Communication I O access the World Wide Web. namely Palmtops. The application enables Palmtop users to access educational content regardless of their physical location, using the advantages inherent to Wireless Networks, such as independence from Conventional cabled connections and mobility. The second module communicates over the air with a Web Server and with Java Servleis, which are able to correct the student's answers and send him/her a performance report indicating the correct and incorrect answers given. The module developed for desktops also generates statistical reports about the student's performance in solving the exercises of the Exercise Lists, enabling teachers to evaluate students aiid improve the educational process. The application described in this paper was implemented using the SoJiware Component-Based technique. exploiting this development technique bgether with the Java 2 Micro Edition. a version of the Java technology developed specifically for the creation ofmobile device applications.

2003 Annual Conference Proceedings

The phenomenal growth in wireless communications coupled with fast changing technologies during the last decade has put new demands on engineering technology curricula. Industry seeks graduates with appropriate background and training. The engineering and engineering technology graduates are not only expected to understand the theory behind state-of-the-art wireless technologies, but also to exhibit hands-on analytical and problem solving skills. To address these changing industrial needs, it is imperative that new courses are developed, implemented, and kept current. However, design and implementation of such a course or sequence of courses requires considerable investment of time and financial resources. Keeping these courses current with respect to the fast pace of technological advances in the field is another challenge for faculty. College and university professors can address these challenges by using the Global Wireless Educational Consortium (GWEC) wireless curriculum modules. These modules, designed through a collaborative effort of academia and industry and totaling 46 modules at present, are revised regularly to maintain currency. Furthermore, industry members provide instructional tools to GWEC academic affiliates. This paper describes the revision and enhancement process of wireless technology lecture/laboratory courses by incorporating existing GWEC modules and industry tools at DeVry University, Dupage campus.

This paper describes the team and software engineering experiences of a group of undergraduate computer science students doing their final project class before graduation. The project was to build and deliver a Java software engineering development environment The students were organized into teams that had specific assignments to deliver portions of the product. The students established a Web page to track their progress and kept metrics on all of their effort. They defined and followed a software development life cycle. This was the first time these students had worked on a real deliverable product. The results of the semester long class was a bootable system running under Linux that is a complete Java software engineering development environment. It is being used today to drive a Web server and a shared development environment for a consulting organization and their clients. The final delivered cost, including the cost of the CDROM was less than $10.00. This team oriented, produc...

Journal of Science Education …, 2007

Within the framework of MITÕs course 1.00: Introduction to Computers and Engineering Problem Solving, this paper describes an innovative project entitled: Studio 1.00 that integrates lectures with in-class demonstrations, active learning sessions, and on-task feedback, through the use of wireless laptop computers. This paper also describes a related evaluation study that investigated the effectiveness of different instructional strategies, comparing traditional teaching with two models of the studio format. StudentsÕ learning outcomes, specifically, their final grades and conceptual understanding of computational methods and programming, were examined. Findings indicated that Studio-1.00, in both its extensive-and partial-active learning modes, enhanced studentsÕ learning outcomes in Java programming. Comparing to the traditional courses, more students in the studio courses received ''A'' as their final grade and less failed. Moreover, students who regularly attended the active learning sessions were able to conceptualize programming principles better than their peers. We have also found two weaknesses in the teaching format of Studio-1.00 that can guide future versions of the course.

This paper is a following up to one presented in 2010 at the AACE. Since 2009, the Apple iPhone and iPod touch have become an integral part of student learning experiences at Abilene Christian University (ACU), with all in-coming freshmen being provided one of these mobile devices. This paper shares the experiences of the authors from teaching a lab-intensive undergraduate introductory course on mobile computing at ACU in 2010 to the present challenges. Discussed within this paper are the authors’ experiences meeting the challenges of the rapidly developing landscape of mobile application development. The paper concludes with a direction for future courses in mobile computing at ACU.

IEEE Transactions on Education, 2000

Increasingly, electrical and computer engineers are making their careers in designing wireless embedded systems. This paper presents a teaching methodology and the associated laboratory setup designed to meet the needs in teaching wireless embedded systems. The courses allow the students not only to apply their previous knowledge of digital system design, computer architecture, electronic circuits, wireless networking, and software engineering, but experience actual systems engineering by designing and implementing a large-scale team project within a semester. A flexible hardware platform was developed and was accompanied by teaching methodologies that allow quick completion of ambitious course projects in this area.

2009

In this paper we present our freely available academic kit to help universities in integrating mobile devices into the Computer Science (CS) curriculum. The kit was designed and developed at the Centre for Mobile Education and Research at the University of Guelph, and includes instructors' resources for introducing and teaching mobile application development. The first release of the kit includes the teaching material for a full introductory course on mobile application development, and concrete teaching modules for integrating mobile devices into courses on software engineering, game design and development, web services, information security, and operating systems.

2012

Abstract As embedded software systems have grown in number, complexity, and importance in the modern world, a corresponding need to teach computer science students how to effectively engineer such systems has arisen. Embedded software systems, such as those that control cell phones, aircraft, and medical equipment, are subject to requirements and constraints that are significantly different from those encountered in the standard desktop computing environment.

2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2016

Research suggests that different teaching styles and multiple exposures of different styles to material can aid in the learning process. While there are guidelines for identifying the best teaching style for material, new and evolving areas can present unique challenges. The emerging area of mobile software development, which combines aspects of software, hardware, and interpersonal interaction, captures many such challenges; e.g., understanding how to develop for multiple screen sizes, designing for GPS time lag, dealing with unreliable sensor data. Teaching these challenging materials seemed well suited for multiple approaches that leveraged different learning styles. This paper examines three teaching approaches employed in ten teaching modules across two semesters of a mobile software development course. The approaches included lectures, interactive tutorials, and Pair Programming. Lectures were used to introduce topics and explore underlying theories of development. The lectures included time for questions from and for the students, but otherwise did not have an active learning component. Two active learning approaches used in the class were interactive tutorials and Pair Programming. Interactive tutorials presented applied development approaches, then explored their use in an individualbased hands-on demos. Pair Programming is an agile software development practice, used in both industry and education, which enforces a role-based approach to learning new programming concepts. Homeworks were used to assess learning, and surveys reflected student satisfaction. Results show areas of promise and of concern with regard to the learning styles. It seems that repetition of topics is important for mastery of the topics. Foundational theories seem well suited for lectures, while programming concepts work better in active learning situations. Additional learning took place through office hours, online question forums, and individual and group online exploration. The findings suggest specific approaches to teaching challenging and unique mobile software development topics as well as a general approach to identifying ways to distribute learning objectives across lectures, interactive tutorials, and Pair Programming sessions.

ICERI2020 Proceedings, 2020

Our schedule for undergraduate bachelor's degree in electrical engineering (most certainly part of the STEM) includes a few skill-based elective courses, such as mobile application development or web application development course. Most often, these courses are offered to students on their second (out of three) year of their education process. This paper shall shortly describe our introductory mobile application development course which is expected to give the students enough knowledge and labbased skills to be able to develop native Android applications with basic functionalities. The development environment and main topics lectured in our 3 ECTS course (30 hours of lectures and 15 hours of computer labs as part of the regular education process) will be given, as well as the expected learning outcomes. Since the course is skill-related, it is expected that each student finishes, documents, and presents all computer lab tasks to the teacher as minimum proof of achieving the basic outcomes. Additionally, each student can choose a topic related to mobile app development and explore it on their own, resulting in an additional application (or Android activities add to the app from computer labs) which is to be documented and presented. Sometimes, better students with a higher interest in mobile applications extend their small projects and use it as a part or even the foundation of their final graduate work. This paper also discusses some real-world issues related to the native Android application development environment and its usage in computer labs. A few topics (user interface and layout design, basic event handling, and simple usage of certain system services) are covered in more detail, with additional remarks about some topics that may be important but are often not being lectured (due to time limits). Some of the topics often selected by students for their small projects (for now, most often location services related) are depicted with student application examples. Since the course was only held regularly (face-to-face, in-person) until recently and not yet held during the Covid-19 outbreak in remote e-learning mode, some thoughts about adapting it (if needed in the future) to remote e-learning are also included.

2019

Teaching on wireless telecommunication networks faces a number of challenges, such as the fact that contents are dynamic in nature, the resulting framework is complex and heterogeneous, design principles can largely vary from one system to another, etc. In order to cope with these challenges, novel and advanced methodologies have to be implemented so that the expectations placed by students and industry are met. In this context, this paper will stress the relevance of exploiting the always-evolving wireless technologies to introduce concepts to students in a non-disruptive way, so that novel concepts associated to newly introduced technologies can be presented on top of previous concepts associated to previously existing technologies. In addition, the integration of theoretical contents and practical experience as key enablers of the learning process will also be stressed.

Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science Education, 2016

2003

In this paper, we present our ideas for basic education in software development integrating the engineering aspect right from the start. We discuss the aspects which are crucial for such an education and summarize our experience with a four semester beginner's course at our university. Our considerations are concluded by an analysis of the role of Java within the approach.

2000

This paper discusses the challenges in setting up and supporting a seminar style wireless laptop classroom.