How Well do Students Understand the All-Encompassing, Ubiquitous, and Interconnected Nature of IoT?

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) content and curricula is a recently emerged trend for computer science and software engineering educators. IoT as a paradigm is often described as an all-encompassing new phenomenon covering homes, industries, governments, and the environment. For that reason, IoT topics have become a part of computer science and software engineering programs. Existing research has been conducted on the development of IoT curricula but as this work is fairly recent the evaluation of those approaches requires further work. This paper presents a case study from a capstone course within a three-course IoT specialization. We evaluate student capstone projects using the thematic analysis method in order to assess our IoT specialization studies. As a result, we present an overview of how the students see the IoT, and what kind of IoT projects they design and implement. Most often the student projects implemented home automation projects. Often these prototypes lacked connectivity and communication capabilities to other systems. An IoT characteristic that is most rarely seen in student projects is 'physical actions in the environment. ' CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics → Computing education.