Designing and implementing a constructionist approach for improving the teaching-learning process in the embedded systems and wireless communications areas

Nowadays, there has been a real change in the traditional (Mexican) methodology for learning and teaching; the teaching of Electronic Sciences needs to identify the real necessities of students to avoid deficiencies in static classrooms. The benefits of the constructionist theory as a learning paradigm are widely recognized, because they support significant learning environments where students are actively related in implementing their own public artifacts; passing through passive to active learning states. Thus, the constructionist theory stresses the need to understand the student's thinking and to encourage them to reflect on their models as a means to improve them. This paper aims to show the results derived from developing a constructionist platform for embedded systems and wireless communications education, using a dedicated methodology based on the constructionist theory. INTRODUCTION During the first decade of XXI century, popularity of portable devices equipped with one or more wireless technologies has increased (e.g. of new paradigms, such as Ubiquitous Computing, has generated the need to reformulate the educative strategies for traditional teaching methods, used for the training of specialists in Communications and Computer Networks, Information Technologies and Embedded Systems areas. Different Universities around the world have been incorporating educative strategies based on learning psychology theories in their curricula, providing in this way, a different way of learning where students can fortify theoretical concepts through constructing and developing artifacts (prototypes, documentation, papers, etc.) [1-3]. In Mexico, the traditional technical education promotes rivalry and individualism among students, contributing in this way to obstruct any innovation of educative strategies; due to the fact that it still uses traditional methods completely based on reading, in which students are steered towards elaborating a summary of a literature review with minimum comments, and not focused on the form or on the context. This situation creates a lack of reflection in the students' passive attitude, favoring the consumption of reading, where remembering and memorizing are more important than internalizing and questioning. Constant changes in Engineering education, especially in embedded systems development and wireless communications, require that teachers incorporate real world problems into the classroom, and support them with learning psychology theories, through the action and construction of tangible artifacts [4]; to strength traditional methods based on reading and to develop the students' significance and understanding [5]. In this paper we present a learning-teaching constructionist platform, called DreamBlue, to help students in developing their own platform based on systems' specification, design …