Innovative Teaching Practice Research on Smart Mobile System Design Experiment
Submission Date: 2023-4-18Author Introduction: Ye Xianfeng (1967—), male, from Jande, Zhejiang, PhD, associate professor, research direction in electronic circuit experimental teaching;Shi Hongjun (1970—), male, from Cixi, Zhejiang, master’s degree, lecturer, research direction in electronic circuit experimental teaching;Deng Jingjing (1990—), female, from Xuzhou, Jiangsu, PhD, experimental teacher, research direction in terahertz technology applications.0 IntroductionIn the context of the construction of “New Engineering”, it is necessary to change the training concept from “knowledge first, skills later” to placing core qualities such as innovation and entrepreneurship, interdisciplinary integration, and critical thinking in an important position. In the “Tian Da Action” for the construction of “New Engineering”, it is proposed that higher education institutions should actively explore comprehensive courses, problem-oriented courses, and interdisciplinary discussion courses to enhance course interest and academic challenge [1]. This requires universities to understand its intent and implement its spirit in teaching practice. The “Smart Mobile System Design Experiment” is a summer short-term course for second-year undergraduates at the College of Information and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University (hereinafter referred to as “Zhejiang University College of Information and Electronics”). The author attempts to effectively implement the goals and requirements of “New Engineering” construction in this comprehensive practical course.1 Course Status Analysis and SolutionsThe College of Information and Electronics at Zhejiang University offers a series of electronic circuit courses for second-year undergraduates and has carried out corresponding teaching reforms. These include theoretical and experimental courses such as “Fundamentals of Electronic Circuits I and II”, “Electronic Engineering Training”, “Electronic Circuit Design Experiments I and II”, and “Digital System Design Experiments I and II” [2-5]. Students are also required to comprehensively apply the knowledge learned from these courses to achieve the simultaneous enhancement of knowledge and skills. This is precisely the original intention of offering the summer short-term course “Smart Mobile System Design Experiment”.The author found in teaching that students have a great enthusiasm for innovative activities such as SRTP and subject competitions, hoping to turn innovative ideas into physical objects and quickly realize a prototype of a physical system. This requires methodological guidance and mastery of necessary tools to ensure that students do not lose enthusiasm due to blind and inefficient efforts.Therefore, constructing a high-quality summer short-term electronic design course not only needs to focus on students’ mastery of knowledge and skills but also on comprehensive application, motivating students to innovate, and achieving comprehensive training in the use of various tools under methodological guidance.The main courses available for students to choose from during the summer short term are “Electronic Circuit System Design and Debugging Practice” [6] and “Smart Mobile System Design Experiment”. The former mainly focuses on mixed-signal design projects, with some projects combined with microcontrollers, primarily emphasizing training in hardware circuit design and production. To stimulate students’ interest and enhance project comprehensiveness, combining software and hardware, and strengthening multifaceted training for students, the College of Information and Electronics has offered the “Smart Mobile System Design Experiment” course since the summer of 2016. This course combines Arduino and Android for experimental design projects, covering both hardware circuit design and production as well as microcontroller applications, guiding students to apply Android program design to create Apps.The “Smart Mobile System Design Experiment” course organically combines electronic circuit design, microcontroller platforms, and mobile App software development, achieving certain teaching effects. However, based on the situation of previous years, there are also some problems. In the course, after determining the project topic, students refer to the experimental handouts, complete literature review, group discussions, teacher-student exchanges, and finalize the plan. Students generally complete experiments according to the functional and parameter requirements specified in the design, referencing examples from the handouts or materials, without completely breaking away from the framework of the handouts or materials, lacking proactive design, and failing to fully utilize their initiative and creativity. When designing specific circuit schemes, they tend to imitate more, deviating from the essence of project-based learning, lacking methodological perspectives in thinking and practical problem-solving.Based on the requirements of “New Engineering” and previous teaching practices, the author formulated the reform content and goals of the course, clarifying some key issues that need to be addressed.(1) Increase methodological guidance in course teaching to avoid students’ blind project design; in all teaching links, strive to stimulate students’ interest and innovative enthusiasm in course experiments; implement the characteristic of multi-faceted training covered in the course, deepening and refining the training of knowledge and skills.(2) Build the “Smart Mobile System Design Experiment” course into a high-quality summer short-term electronic design practice course based on methodological guidance, innovation, and comprehensive training.(3) Sort out the project designs and their methodologies involved, guiding students to reduce blind design, allowing students to conduct project design under methodological guidance; stimulate students’ innovative enthusiasm from aspects such as project design settings and teaching forms, fully utilizing their initiative and creativity; provide sufficient training for students in assembly processing technology, hardware circuits, and software programming.2 Specific Implementation Plan of the Course2.1 Implementation Plan(1) The “Smart Mobile System Design Experiment” course implements the idea of prototype design, with various methodologies centered around prototype design. The teaching guides students to establish a prototype design mindset, implement a series of software and hardware design principles [7-8], and recognize the advantages of prototype design and production, aiming for prototype development. Prototyping can reduce development difficulty, enhance development efficiency, and allow timely changes and modifications to the device. The prototype design method is not only a method for course experiments but also a general method for various product design and production. Through the prototype design process, students can understand the software design process, which includes requirements analysis, functional design, specifications, user testing, system testing, and various software engineering principles, training students to flexibly apply the knowledge learned.(2) Stimulate students’ innovative enthusiasm from aspects such as project design settings and teaching forms, fully utilizing their initiative and creativity. In teaching, increase topic selection sessions to stimulate students’ originality. Based on students’ preliminary intentions for topic selection, students with similar projects are grouped together to discuss project topics, encouraging active participation. During the discussion process, students experience the process of idea stimulation, thereby improving their learning enthusiasm and better achieving course goals. When selecting topics, teachers provide an overall framework model for the project, briefly introduce topic examples, do not impose excessive requirements on performance parameters, and encourage students to establish projects and choose topics independently, fully utilizing their initiative. Students can learn from each other’s ideas, engage in free thinking, express their opinions, categorize and filter, and continuously propose valuable creative solutions while exercising teamwork skills.(3) Provide students with sufficient training in assembly processing technology, hardware circuits, and software programming. The “Smart Mobile System Design Experiment” course involves learning various knowledge and skill training in teaching. For example, in the multi-link electronic circuit hardware training, students learn and master mechanical assembly, circuit soldering, and expansion board production processes, training various skills for debugging electronic circuits on breadboards, universal boards, and PCB boards. Simultaneously, in software tool training, it involves EDA tool software (Fritzing, Altium Designer), Arduino platform software (including C/C++ programming language), and Android platform software (App Inventor 2 or Android Studio). Through specific project-based practical training, students can proficiently use this software in complete projects and complete various software training.2.2 Implementation Plan ExecutionHaving students conduct project design under certain methodological guidance is a key consideration in the reform of the “Smart Mobile System Design Experiment” course. The author uses the prototype design method as a case to illustrate the teaching of methodological design.The prototype design method is similar to the relationship between classes and objects in object-oriented programming languages. The core idea of prototype design is that when a system requires the creation of a large number of identical/similar objects, new objects are created by copying specified “prototype instances (objects)” that are the same as that object. In simple terms, it means “cloning a specified object”, where the “prototype instance (object)” is the object being cloned.In the design of smart mobile systems, the “prototype instance (object)” can be understood as the overall framework model of the project. Therefore, the author proposes the overall framework model for the smart mobile system project, as shown in Figure 1. This model mainly includes smart mobile devices, embedded systems, and prototype devices. The entire framework includes users, Android smartphones, embedded systems based on the Arduino platform, and personal computers.
With the help of the Arduino integrated development environment (IDE) on the personal computer, the program is compiled and uploaded to the Arduino board via USB transmission line. The prototype device and phone are connected via wireless communication (Bluetooth). Through touch, pressing the screen of the Android phone, and user interface (UI), users can send commands to the Arduino microcontroller, which are executed by the actuator.After understanding this model, students can more easily grasp the principles of specific examples of smart mobile systems (such as remote-controlled smart cars, remote-controlled drones, smart small greenhouse control systems, etc.) and can draw inferences about other cases, proposing their projects and conducting “cloning specified objects” prototype design.The smart mobile system design experiment requires students to possess a wide range of knowledge and skills, and the prerequisite courses cannot fully cover the knowledge and skills required for the experiment. Therefore, in the only two weeks of the summer short term, students not only need to learn these knowledge and skills but also apply them freely in course design. For example, in the design of the mobile phone control interface App, the development of mobile applications is based on MIT’s App Inventor 2 software, which differs from conventional application development solutions. The design requires students to apply for a free account to start generating projects and program through a block-based environment similar to a puzzle game. This provides a convenient way for students without a Java programming background to quickly build Android Apps. Students generally take 3 to 4 days to become proficient with this development tool.For the microcontroller project, the Arduino platform based on Atmel’s AVR Atmega series microcontroller chips is chosen, with simple code and small memory footprint. Arduino hardware is fully open-source, making it a typical representative in the Internet of Things field and even in the physical computing domain. The open-source sharing culture of the Arduino community provides ample space for students to conduct project design, making it quite suitable for university course design projects [9-10].3 Course EffectivenessBased on the above adjustments and designs, students are generally able to successfully complete a comprehensive project design task during the summer short term. The mobile phone Bluetooth remote-controlled smart car completed by students is shown in Figure 2.
During the two-week course, students deeply realized that not only did they integrate the knowledge learned from previous electronic courses, but they also learned to use mobile App development tools and designed the control interface for the mobile intelligent system. Some students with extra capacity could also prepare necessary knowledge and skills for participating in SRTP, electronic design competitions, etc. This course plays a “final push” role in the entire electronic circuit teaching system, greatly improving the electronic circuit curriculum system.4 ConclusionBy explaining specific design examples, the abstract principles of hardware prototype design methodology, software design, and engineering principles are applied to specific project designs. The teacher provides an overall framework model for the project, stimulating students’ initiative and creativity. Throughout the design and implementation process of the experimental project, students complete mechanical assembly, circuit soldering, and expansion board production processes, training various skills for debugging electronic circuits on breadboards, universal boards, and PCB boards, and learning EDA tool software, Arduino platform tool software, and Android platform tool software, achieving comprehensive training in software and hardware knowledge and skills. During the summer short-term experimental process, students show high enthusiasm for learning and successfully complete the course content, aligning with the original intention of the course.[References][1] Zhong Denghua. The Connotation and Action of “New Engineering” Construction [J]. Research on Higher Engineering Education, 2017, 3(1): 6.[2] Li Xihua, Ye Xianfeng, Shi Hongjun. Teaching Reform and Practice of “Electronic Circuit Experiment” Course [J]. Experimental Science and Technology, 2014, 12(2): 72-74.[3] Li Xihua, Shi Hongjun, Ye Xianfeng. Development of Electronic Circuit Basic Experiment System [J]. Experimental Science and Technology, 2015, 13(1): 64-66.[4] Ye Xianfeng, Li Xihua, Shi Hongjun. Teaching Practice of Electronic Circuit Design Experiment Based on Arduino Platform [J]. Experimental Science and Technology, 2020(4): 68-72.[5] Qu Minjun, Tang Yi, Ma Hongqing. Digital System Design Experiment Tutorial (Second Edition) [M]. Beijing: Science Press, 2018: 1-19.[6] Li Xihua, Ye Xianfeng, Shi Hongjun. Teaching Design of “Electronic Circuit Installation and Debugging Practice” Course [J]. Laboratory Science, 2013, 16(2): 158-160.[7] Banz, Hilo. Love Arduino [M]. Beijing: People’s Posts and Telecommunications Press, 2016: 5.[8] Whit, Arduino Technology Insider [M]. Beijing: People’s Posts and Telecommunications Press, 2013: 200-245.[9] Li Yihao, Pei Xuming, Li Hongwei. Introduction of Arduino Open Source Hardware into Mechatronics Course Practice Teaching [J]. Modern Education Equipment in China, 2015(1): 61-63.[10] Zhang Chongming, Ye Hong, Ni Jifeng. Teaching Practice of Offering Arduino Elective Course for First-Year Undergraduates [J]. Experimental Technology and Management, 2018, 35(3): 169-171.Producer: Li Yue Reviewer: Xiao Boai
