Wireless4×4: An integrating learning experience for Telecommunications students

Abstract

The Telecommunications Engineering degree contains the study and understanding of a wide variety of knowledge areas, like signal theory and communications, computer networks or radio propagation. This diversity of fields makes it hard for the students to integrate all these knowledge, which in turns results essential to tackle real and practical problems that involve different subjects. As a response to this need of integration, in University Rey Juan Carlos an educational project based on Problem Based Learning (PBL), called the Wireles4x4 Project, has been carried out. In this project, groups of students build a complete system that is able to autonomously drive a radio controlled car, involving different technologies such as wireless communications, positioning systems, power management or system integration. The objectives of this educational project are: (1) The development of an active learning methodology, by which the students acquire integrated knowledge and skills on a variety of subjects; (2) The acquisition of professional skills like teamwork capabilities, oral and written communication, and long term task scheduling; (3) The participation of the students in an interdisciplinary engineering project with time and budgetary constraints. The results show that the participating students improve not only their specific knowledge on the involved issues, but also their capability of integrating different subjects of the degree and the skills for autonomous learning.