Integrating a real life engineering case study into the syllabus of an undergraduate network programming using HTML and Java course

Journal of SMET Education : Innovations and Research, Jan-Jun 2003 by Marghitu, Daniela, Sankar, Chetan S, Raju, P K

This result might have happened since the case study was included in a lab session along with two other assignments. In addition, no lecture time was used to explain the case study, analyze the operating system options, and integrate the case study with the instructional materials used in the class. Given the limited amount of time provided to the case study, it is interesting to see that the students perceived that it was important, valuable, instructionally helpful, relevant, and useful.

Given the results, there are plans to further incorporate the case study in future lectures. For example, the students could be asked to design a HTML page summarizing the problem presented in the case study to add a video of the student summarizing the problem to the HTML page, to add a table comparing the different alternatives, and to create a webpage using frames to describe the analysis performed on the case study, thereby providing a real-world link to the theories covered in the first four lectures in this course. Once the case study is integrated in such a manner in the course, the results of the evaluation might change.

Conclusions

At the time of this writing the COMP2000 has been administered eight times. Students' class evaluations have been extremely encouraging and we have started to introduce a multimedia case study to this class. We observe the following:

1. Students are very much interested in the "hands-on", interactive and dynamic type of lecture we have developed. Some of them have expressed their interest in bringing their own laptop computers in class so they can work more effectively with the lecturer.

2. The self-paced course web site allows students to better prepare in advance for the lectures and lab, to work at their own pace on the lab assignments at home or on campus. Due to a weak computer background, some students need to attend the scheduled lab sessions for more one on one work session with the lab instructor.

3. Extra course exercises (not for extra credit) for our more advanced students who would like to explore more of the subject matter as well as for students who need more practice were successfully offered via the course adaptive learning web page. In this way we try to keep a balance between the goals of students who have vastly different computer backgrounds and professional course related goals.

4. Even though the case study was introduced to a limited extent in this class, the data from the various aspects of the course evaluation indicates that the case study method of instruction, which incorporated varying aspects of technology, is a worthwhile and beneficial method of instruction for teaching a CSSE course. The case study method of instruction appeared to combine theory with practice as well as encourage the use of higherorder thinking skills within the students-- the two primary objectives of this particular case study.

Acknowledgments

We thank Randy Bradley for helping us analyze the questionnaires. The funding for developing this paper was based partially upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers: 0001454, and 0089036. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this web site are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.