1 research outputs found
Physical Education and English Language Arts Based K-12 Engineering Outreach in Software Defined Networking (Extended Version)
K-12 engineering outreach has typically focused on elementary electrical and
mechanical engineering or robot experiments integrated in science or math
classes. In contrast, we propose a novel outreach program focusing on
communication network principles that enable the ubiquitous web and smart-phone
applications. We design outreach activities that illustrate the communication
network principles through activities and team competitions in physical
education (PE) as well as story writing and cartooning in English Language Arts
(ELA) classes. The PE activities cover the principles of store-and-forward
packet switching, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) web page download,
connection establishment in cellular wireless networks, as well as packet
routing in Software-Defined Networking (SDN). The proposed outreach program has
been formatively evaluated by K-12 teachers. A survey for the evaluation of the
impact of the outreach program on the student perceptions, specifically, the
students' interest, self-efficacy, utility, and negative stereotype perceptions
towards communication network engineering, is also presented