Collaborative-Competitive Methodology for Wireless Communications System Education

The telecommunications industry is demanding more technical and non-technical skills as well as increased creativity and flexibility from its next generation workforce. University education provides strong fundamental background, but can offer only limited hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology, development tools, and processes as part of the broader curriculum. Whereas gaining relevant experience is generally possible for theses, we propose a new educational methodology and tools that can be used in classes at any degree level. Specifically, we introduce a hands-on learning methodology that consists of collaborative and competitive modules and apply it for teaching modern wireless communications. It has seven learning stages that follow the principles of project-based learning. The evaluation requires special attention, and several mechanisms are discussed for evaluating students and the methodology. Enabled by software radio technology, we present a practical learning environment and open source software tools that facilitate developing many of the needed technical and soft skills and demonstrate the suitability of the proposed methodology as applied to the undergraduate Software Radio Engineering class at Barcelona Tech-UPC.