Liang Hong

Real-World Relevant Learning with Android Smartphones

Advanced mobile devices such as smartphones have become a part of daily lives for digital native students today. We believe that the integration of mobile computing into computer science (CS) curricula with smart mobile devices based learning tools will connect the education to leading-edge information technologies, motivate and engage students in CS learning, innovate CS education, fill in the gap between academia and industry, and help faculty build strong expertise on modern mobile computing. Meanwhile, the hands-on experience with mobile computing will promote student learning with a better understanding of the fundamental CS concepts. In this paper, we propose to design and develop a labware based on Android-enabled smartphones to introduce mobile computing knowledge and practice into the CS curriculum, covering a wide range of CS subjects.

Low-cost and portable labware for computing curriculum using scalable mobile sensory platform

Mobile embedded system is an excellent candidate to provides depth, breadth, and rigorousness for meeting the emerging workforce and education needs in science, technology, and engineering. However, the high requirements of investment in resources and instructors make the mobile embedded system education impractical for universities and colleges that lack the resources and build-ups. This work-in-progress paper presents a novel low-cost and portable labware for hands-on labs and projects using Android smartphones and scalable sensory platform. It is easy-to-adopt, promotes students with authentic and creative learning, and supports wide dissemination.

Work in progress: Enhance CS/CE student learning in computer architecture and organization through a remote instrument control lab with mixed reality

The paper presents our preliminary work on developing a remote hardware development lab using mixed reality technology (mRLab). The mRLab allows a group of students to remotely and simultaneously work on a VHDL project with an FPGA development board. All lab objects are created in 3D and an interactive layer on the 3D objects is added to host learning information along with caveats to assist learning.

Work in progress: Multi-faceted penetration of fast fourier transform by interactively analyzing real-world objects via mobile technology

Recent research shows that the engineering students have problems connecting the required computation to a conceptual understanding, as well as translating a graphical understanding of the process to a symbolic mathematical representation, especially when handling the multiple steps of the procedures. The students are usually able to perform sequences of the underlying calculations but cannot piece together the higher conceptual relationship that drives these procedures. This work-in-progress paper presents a viable approach and a new teaching and learning paradigm to enhance the effectiveness of teaching fast Fourier transform and significantly improve the learning outcomes. By integrating the mobile and cloud computing technologies, we are developing a handheld real-world relevance laboratory that includes an integrated learning module for Fourier transform and a shared intelligent project repository to host the module and real-world relevant data. This development is expected to overcome the intellectual inaccessibility of transform techniques and tackle the challenges in existing approaches: the prohibitive cost of project-based approach; limited access and real-world relevance data in simulation-based approach, and unreliable and unsustainable support.

Android-Based Mobile Sensory System Labware for Embedded System Education

To overcome shortcomings in existing embedded system education, this paper presents an ongoing work on developing a novel Android-based Mobile Sensory System Lab ware that is portable, affordable, and easily adoptable. The proposed lab ware can facilitate authentic and creative learning of embedded systems and provide extensive hands-on experience using mobile embedded platforms. Preliminary feedback from students is positive and encouraging.

The cross-curriculum mobile computing labware for CS (abstract only)

Advanced mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets have become a part of daily lives for digital native students today. The integration of mobile computing with these devices into multiple courses in computer science (CS) curriculum will connect the education to leading-edge information technologies, motivate and engage students in CS learning, fill in the gap with IT industry needs, and help faculties build strong expertise on modern mobile computing. Meanwhile, the hands-on experience with mobile computing will supply the students with a better understanding of the classical CS concepts. In this paper, we propose to develop a cross-curriculum labware based on the Android platform to introduce the knowledge and practice of a wide range of CS subjects with smart phones and tablets.