Work-in-Progress: The Development of a Smart-Environments Learning Kit for Computer Science Classes

Embedding curriculum content in relevant contexts is a challenge computer science teachers face. The idea of smart environments as networking embedded computers to complete everyday tasks provides strong possibilities for context orientation, including smart homes, smart cities, and Industry 4.0. In particular, the context smart home offers teachers exciting and versatile possibilities to introduce students to computer science. It enables teaching programming, networks, communication protocols, and electrical engineering in a student-oriented manner. In order to provide teachers with a low-barrier opportunity to use this context in computer science classes, we developed a smart-environments learning kit. The kit contains hardware that can be easily interconnected and recombined, leaving plenty of room for individual development and internal differentiation. First pilot uses of the kit in different learning groups revealed room for improvement: For instance, preparing the boards in computer science classes is too time-consuming, and the open-source firmware of the hardware modules is too complex to be covered in class. Following a design-based research approach, this work-in-progress paper documents lessons learned from the piloting implementations and illustrates potential solutions.

I. Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT), which describes, among other things, the increasing networking between smart objects inside and outside the Internet, is finding its way more and more into our lives, especially through the topic of smart environments (concrete smart home), and is thus a relevant context for computer science teaching [1]. As a cross-cutting topic, IoT enables a motivationally affective and topical context for research-based teaching in order to teach various computer science contents from the sub-areas of practical, theoretical, applied, and technical computer science in a practical and meaningful way with a relevant connection to everyday life [2]. For teachers, the question arises of how this complex of topics can be brought to learners in a meaningful way. For this reason, we described in a previous paper [3] the development of a possible IoT infrastructure that allows learners to develop smart home solutions themselves.