Developing hands-on laboratory exercises for teaching STEM students the internet-of-things, cloud computing and blockchain applications

Abstract

The fields of computer science and engineering are undergoing rapid change, with significant advances in areas including the internet-of-things, cloud computing, and blockchain technologies. Consequently, the gap between traditional course material taught to students in B.S./M.S. programs at universities and the cutting edge of technology used in industry is widening at an unprecedented rate. Students may get overwhelmed and discouraged by the amount of material they need to learn, contributing to high dropout rates in STEM fields, particularly in computer science and engineering. We propose a hands-on laboratory based approach to teach the students the basics of these emerging areas. The objective is to motivate and engage students by encouraging them to tinker with physical systems, so that they can develop an intuitive understanding of the new technologies. We present an approach using the Raspberry Pi, a small and inexpensive platform that allows students to build interesting applications in the area of the internet-of-things. We provide the preferred sequencing of necessary material, and the required combination of different software modules necessary to teach the students. We discuss our experience of teaching this course to both graduate and undergraduate students. Our results should be beneficial to instructors interested in exposing their students to these emerging technologies. Our main finding is that students prefer hands-on laboratory exercises to theoretical instruction. They are able to grasp concepts better when there is a short theoretical lecture followed immediately by related hands-on laboratory exercises. We present specific laboratory exercises to teach students about the end-to-end processing involved in acquiring images, creating immutable records using a cryptographic hash function, and transmitting and storing them on the cloud. These lab exercises provide students with an understanding of camera-based security applications, basic blockchain technology, and cloud computing.