MODULE-BASED COURSEWARE FOR TEACHING SECURE WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

摘要

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become an ideal example software-hardware system for modern teaching and learning. Although there is an increasing trend to incorporate the principles of WSNs and their security issues into the mainstream undergraduate and graduate Computer Science curricula, it is still challenging to teach suitable WSN courses mainly because of the complexities of WSNs and the lack of easy-to-use course modules. Our goal is to develop practical course modules that can enable experimental learning and technology-based education. Specifically, the modules range from the basic software and hardware of WSNs to commonly used WSN services. To familiarize students with TinyOS programming, a hands-on project, the implementation of a multihop data collection tree protocol, is included in the modules. Summative evaluation was conducted when the modules were used in teaching a Computer Science course in WSNs. The evaluation results are discussed in this paper.