Introducing IoT Competencies to First-Year University Students With The Tiles Toolkit

Advances in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) are introducing innovations in multiple domains including smart cities, healthcare and transportation. An increasing number of jobs today require IoT competences that university courses need to be prepared to deliver. Yet, teaching IoT topics is a challenging task due to complexity and unstructured nature of the IoT. It requires to deliver skills in multiple domains including design, hardware and software engineering and it is often hard to find an entry point to the field. In this paper we explore using the Tiles ideation toolkit as a way to teach bachelor students in IT topics IoT fundamentals. Tiles is composed by a set of 150 cards and a workshop procedure for collaborative ideation. We performed a user study with 60 computer science students to investigate how Tiles can be used as an experiential learning tool to develop basic knowledge in IoT and to train design thinking skills. Results show the tool was accepted as useful and fun to play with. Nearly all students managed to develop a simple IoT idea during the three-hours workshop. Learning outcomes were observed in about half of participants, although time constraints and high stress levels impacted the participants' experience.