Teaching and learning engineering subjects in the times of the IoT: A case study on a course on wireless communications and networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming important in many areas that include health, entertainment, manufacturing, automotive, home and building automation, industrial, etc. Will it be important for education and more specifically for teaching and learning? If so, what engineering subjects would benefit the most and how effective could the IoT be for teaching and learning? Can IoT technologies and environments be effectively used to enhance teaching and learning engineering subjects? In this paper, we describe the development of a new course on wireless communications and networks that makes heavy use of IoT technologies. The paper describes in detail one new laboratory experiment involving an SDR board (BladeRF) sending messages to an RFM22 based receiver using a specific modulation scheme and data frame structure. The BladeRF board together with a laptop running GNU radio and GRC (GNU radio companion) act as the transmitter. Preliminary feedback indicates that IoT technologies and environments are promising to enhance teaching and learning of electrical and computer engineering subjects.