Crowdsourced Peer Learning Activity for Internet of Things Education: A Case Study

Computing devices such as laptops, tablets, and mobile phones have become part of our daily lives. End users increasingly know more and more information about these devices. Further, more technically savvy end users know how such devices are being built and know how to choose one over others. However, we cannot say the same about Internet of Things (IoT) products. Due to its infancy in the marketplace, end users have a very limited idea about IoT products. To address this issue, we developed a method, a crowdsourced peer learning activity, supported by an online platform (OLYMPUS) to enable a group of learners to learn the IoT products space better. We conducted two different user studies to validate that our tool enables better IoT education. Our method guides learners to think more deeply about IoT products and their design decisions. The learning platform we developed is open source and available for the community.