Augmenting Undergraduate Computer Science Education With Programmable Smartwatches

Abstract

Smartwatches are emerging as wrist-based computers capable of complex calculation and communication, and the computer science curriculum should reflect the challenges and opportunities that they provide in the education domain. This paper puts forth an experience report focused on efforts to incorporate smartwatches in an upper-level undergraduate mobile application development class during two academic terms. Lectures, in-class activities, homeworks, and projects were tailored toward providing rich design and implementation experiences for the students that engaged them in developing for the smartwatch and a paired mobile device. Our experiences highlighted how incorporating smartwatches into a mobile app development class adds a valuable dimension in terms of design and implementation challenges and allowed students to exercise some of the fundamental computer science topics.