ASEE 2019 IoT Workshop

The ongoing 4th industrial revolution, driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), is having profound impacts on industries of all kinds, especially manufacturers. Further, the increasing ability to collect and analyze large amounts of data has impacts beyond manufacturing. Given the critical role that engineering educators play in supplying the engineering workforce for the nation – and the critical role of our schools in other areas impacted by IoT – development and distribution of state-of-the-art undergraduate curriculum that enhances graduates’ knowledge and skills in the IoT space is important. Our preliminary discussions with industry have revealed that the desired “IoT” knowledge, at this point, is supplemental to traditional curricula, not (yet) something that would replace topics seen as core to most engineering programs. However, this frames the challenge of curriculum development in this area: the topics are by nature interdisciplinary and may extend beyond a faculty member’s typical comfort zone. Therefore, our institution hosted an Internet of Things Curriculum Workshop in January 2019. The purpose of this workshop was to support faculty members from across our state to work together, to collaboratively develop and share IoT course modules to enhance educational outcomes for engineering and other programs state-wide. This workshop was designed to enable faculty to: (1) learn about the need for curriculum directly from industry collaborators at a round-table discussion; (2) learn about existing IoT curriculum development efforts at sister institutions; (3) begin the collaborative development of new course modules to enhance existing, and potentially new courses in a wide range of engineering and related disciplines. The modules are to be broadly accessible across our state and will serve as a first step toward broader dissemination of IoT-related topics in engineering curricula. This paper will present the planning, organization, and structure of the workshop, including a report of its lessons learned, initial findings and results, with the purpose of enabling other institutions to learn from our experience.

Note: The above summary was taken from page 1 of the downloable PDF below.