Teaching Computer Engineering Concepts to Non-Technical Students
Teaching Computer Engineering Concepts to Non-Technical Students

Summary/Abstract: Currently, most of the work fields benefit from the use of computers and from various ways to automatize many of the existing tasks. The result is that many various fields of study have introduced computer science classes in their curriculum, from electrical engineering to civil engineering or architecture. One of the issues these universities have is that it is difficult for the students to understand the computer science concepts and to make the connection between these theoretical notions and their field of study. In this paper we propose an approach that allows instructors and professors to introduce computer science notions to students having non-computer science background, such as electrical engineering or even fine arts students. Our solution is an open-source platform that consist of both a hardware and a software component which work together to enable students to build applications related to their field of study. The platform we suggest is a Raspberry Pi extension board which allows students to read data from or control peripherals such as solar panels, LEDs, temperature sensors, etc. On top of the platform instructors can place physical elements, such as houses or traffic lights structures, making the process more interactive and more intuitive. The platform can be controlled through an interface that allows programming in a visual way, generating Python code that the students can analyse.

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