Supporting engoneering students learning wireless network planning using mobile, positioning and web technologies

Teaching and learning the principles of wireless communication is a challenging issue mainly because it is difficult for students to translate the theoretical models that are commonly used in this area into practical knowledge. In order to address this challenge, we explore how to design and implement novel teaching and learning activities that integrate the principles of situated learning supported by mobile, positioning and web technologies. In this paper we present the results of our on-going efforts in this direction describing the rationale of our approach, an application supporting a learning activity designed under this approach and the outcomes of an evaluation we conducted with 28 engineering students. Obtained results show that the proposed approach offers the students new possibilities to combine theoretical and practical knowledge in a variety of collaborative situations in which mobile and web technologies played a central role.