Enhance Computer Network Curriculum using Collaborative Project-based Learning

Abstract

It has been widely recognized that hands-on design and implementation is one of the essential skills that students should acquire to become qualified computer networking engineers. To enhance the training of students' design skills, the computer networks community has made significant efforts to create a number of network simulation tools to support hands-on projects in various network layers. However, how to develop an effective teaching strategy to integrate the network simulator-based projects into network courses as project-based and inquiry-based learning tools still remains a challenging task. In addition, due to the huge difference among different institutions, successful implementation experience in one institution usually cannot directly apply to the others. Recently, California State University Los Angeles (CSULA) received a CCLI grant from NSF to explore a good solution to enhance the learning of a very diverse student body in a multicultural campus that serves a significant number of underrepresented minority students. The project goals are three folds: 1) Establish a cyberinfrastructure to enable remote learning which significantly improve the learning efficiency of students on a commuter campus; 2) Foster students' hands-on design and implementation skills in networking field; 3) Improve teaching and learning efficiency by integrating project-based and inquiry-based learning pedagogy. This paper presents our current progress on the CCLI project, which is focused on the development of a sequence of scalable remote labs using OPNET to enable the integration of collaborative project-based and inquiry-based based learning into existing computer networking courses in both Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments. The remote lab sequence offers projects of three different scopes to progressively build up the students' design and implementation skills. Small scope projects can be incorporated into lectures to expose the students to basic design and simulation process. The knowledge and skills acquired through small scope projects allow the students to work collaboratively on median scope projects after class remotely. The large scope projects require the students to apply what they have learned to solve some open-ended problems. The developed projects cover all five layers in TCP/IP model to reinforce the students' understanding of various protocols. Furthermore, the current effort to revise the computer networking curriculum using collaborative project-based and inquiry-based learning is presented. Preliminary assessment results are included to show the impact of the curriculum revision.

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