Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

An Online RFID Laboratory Learning Environment and the Assessment of its User’s Education

Abstract

Due to the increasing demand for RFID expertise and the existence of a knowledge gap between industry and academia in this domain, work has been stimulated to help spread understanding in this field and bridge the gap between theoretical examinations and industrial practices. Amongst the encouraged work, there is the I-ATMUS project (Integrated Auto-ID Technology for Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Studies) that involved developing a remotely controllable RFID laboratory system. Technological resources can now be accessed by learners through the Web technology to apply appropriate configurations to the system, conduct experiments using RFID technology, and perform statistical analysis on the acquired data. Furthermore, the developed educational tool was used by a class of student that showed improvements in their confidence, knowledge, and skills.

Introduction

For some technologies, the supply of their qualified users struggles to match the pace of the associated growing demand. In other words, the growth of the skilled-user-community may not be able to keep up with the rapid evolvement or emergence of these technologies. Companies may use outsourcing or internal training to obtain the necessary expertise, but that does not always solve the problem in a time or cost effective manner. While that might be a constraint, a relatively great number of potential expert users of a specific technology are supplied from schools and universities. One solution would be to expose more engineering students to the newest technologies, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), while they are still in school. This can lead to an increase in the supply of acquainted users, who can become experts at later times. The problem with such a strategy is that a technology might not be available or accessible to enough institutions to see the desired educational results. Whether or not that is due to affordability, novelty, or safety issues, the problem is likely to persist until some type of collaboration is established between organizations that teach different kinds of technologies. A way to promote educational collaboration and instructional instrument sharing is the utilization of ubiquitous Web technology to provide remote access to the scarce technological resources of a certain institution. For this reason, it would be desirable to develop learning environments that yield remote access to technological resources as well as collaborative learning. In fact, several institutions started promoting online educational tools from which students at different locations can greatly benefit by accessing remote laboratory equipment and obtaining hands-on experience [1-7]. Not only that, but Web technology is also able to provide new teaching techniques that are appealing to students [5]. On the other hand, RFID is one of the new technologies that is more visible than ever and has a high potential of being used extensively in the near future. The existence of RFID laboratories in educational environments will serve the purpose of providing testing results and conclusions, as well as giving the involved students the opportunity to obtain hands-on experience, making them potential RFID experts and valuable assets to RFID stakeholders. This is important for

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Lehlou, N., & Buyurgan, N., & Chimka, J. (2009, June), An On Line Rfid Laboratory Learning Environment And The Assessment Of Its Users’ Education Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5397