Analysis of Student Preconceptions Related to Quality of Service and Basic Principles in Telecommunications

Mark J Indelicato; Miguel Bazdresch; George H Zion; Joseph (Yossi) Nygate; Surabhi M Sarda

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Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Start Date: June 24, 2017
End Date: June 28, 2017
Conference Session: Curricular Innovations 1
Tagged Division: Educational Research and Methods
Page Count: 14
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--27591
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/27591
Download Count: 624

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Paper Authors

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Mark J Indelicato Rochester Institute of Technology (CAST)

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Mark J. Indelicato is an associate professor in the College of Applied Science and Technology (CAST) in the department of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology since 1990. Previously, he was a Large Business Systems Communications Engineer for NEC America, specializing in large scale deployment of voice and data network switching equipment. He teaches in the Master of Science Telecommunications Engineering Technology program and conducts research in Real Time Audio Collaboration (RTAC) and the feasibility, logistics and implementation of live recording sessions carried and delivered over IP networks, Anomaly Detection for Music developing recommender systems for listeners and consumers and 3-D Audio perception.
Indelicato holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Engineering (BEEE) from Manhattan College, a Master of Science in Information Systems Engineering (MSISE) from Brooklyn Polytechnic University and is an active member of IEEE, ASEE, and the Audio Engineering Society (AES).

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Miguel Bazdresch Rochester Institute of Technology (CAST)

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Miguel Bazdresch obtained his PhD in Electronic Communications from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications, in France, in 2004. He worked for several years designing digital integrated circuits for the telecommunications industry. After teaching at ITESO University, in Mexico, from 2005 to 2012, he came to the Electronics, Computers and Telecommunications Engineering Technology Department at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he is an Assistant Professor.

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George H Zion Rochester Institute of Technology (CAST)

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George H. Zion
Professor - Computer Engineering Technology
Affiliate Director - Project Lead The Way
Rochester Institute of Technology

Professor Zion has been working with Project Lead the Way since 1997, first in the capacity as a University Affiliate Professor for the Digital Electronics curriculum and for the last four year as the Affiliate Director at RIT.

His teaching and research interests include software development for embedded systems design and K-12 pre-engineering activities.

Professor Zion received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering Technology and M.S. degree in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology. Prior to joining RIT, he was an R&D design engineer for Microwave Filter Company in Syracuse, New York. He is a member of ASEE and IEEE.

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Joseph (Yossi) Nygate Rochester Institute of Technology (CAST)

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Current position
Associate Professor, College of Applied Science and Technology, RIT

Previous employment
10 years as Vice President of Technology and Architecture, Amdocs
6 years as Director of Architecture and Business Development, Nortel Networks
10 years, MTS Research and Development, AT&T Bell Labs

Education
PhD Computer Engineering, 1994, Case Western Reserve University, USA - AT&T Bell Labs, PhD Scholar
MSc Computer Science, 1985, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
MSc Applied Mathematics, 1985, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
BSc Computer Science and Mathematics, 1982, Ben-Gurion University, Israel

Interests
Big Data Applications in Telecommunications
Software Defined Networks – operations, management and orchestration
Artificial Intelligence – expert systems, intelligent agents, reinforcement learning
Self-Organizing Networks
Number Theory

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Surabhi M Sarda Rochester Institute of Technology (COE)

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Surabhi Sarda holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) from Rochester Institute of Technology, USA and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics Engineering (BEEE) from Nagpur University, India. Presently, she is working as a Product Support Engineer with Access Control Group where her role involves testing and validation of cell and Wi-Fi enabled Asset Management products and as a Research Assistant with Rochester Institute of Technology involving Data Analysis & Visualization.

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Abstract

Student preconceptions play an important role in education. In the constructivist theory, the students’ cognitive process is understood as building new knowledge using existing ideas as a starting point. However, students’ preconceptions and intuitions are often false, naïve or incomplete. When aware of this fact, instructors can find these misconceptions early in a course, and devise an educational methodology to address them19,2. We aim to identify student preconceptions related to networking and telecommunications engineering technology with the objective of increasing the effectiveness of our teaching methodologies. We hypothesize that to effectively address misconceptions, student culture must be taken into account. In addition, by analyzing student responses to misconception testing, we have taken the first steps in developing a concept inventory for telecommunications and networking. This work augments a previous study on STEM undergraduate students’ preconceptions regarding Quality of Service (QoS) in telecommunications13, by giving the same survey to a larger number of students across different programs and countries and investigating the effects of culture and experience on preconceptions related specifically to QoS. In this study, the survey was given to two new groups of students and the pre- and post-instruction responses were the analyzed. The first group was primarily from India and were studying towards a graduate degree in telecommunications; the second group was primarily from the USA and were taking a networking class as part of their undergraduate degree. The students were asked to respond either “yes” or “no” to multiple questions and then explain the reasoning behind their response. The data from each group was analyzed, the undergraduate data was then compared with data from the previous study, and the undergraduate and graduate data were compared to each other with respect to culture and experience 20. In addition, a new survey was given to another set of graduate students to study preconceptions related to concepts in telecommunications that were not related to QoS. We used our overall results and analyzed the wording, key phrases and key words in their explanations, to create an initial concept inventory specific to telecommunications. This concept inventory will allow instructors to prepare their instructional material and tune their didactic approaches to meet specific student need - some of which may be related to culture and experience.

Citation
Format

Indelicato, M. J., & Bazdresch, M., & Zion, G. H., & Nygate, J. Y., & Sarda, S. M. (2017, June), Analysis of Student Preconceptions Related to Quality of Service and Basic Principles in Telecommunications Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27591

TY - CPAPER
AB - Student preconceptions play an important role in education. In the constructivist theory, the students’ cognitive process is understood as building new knowledge using existing ideas as a starting point. However, students’ preconceptions and intuitions are often false, naïve or incomplete. When aware of this fact, instructors can find these misconceptions early in a course, and devise an educational methodology to address them19,2.
We aim to identify student preconceptions related to networking and telecommunications engineering technology with the objective of increasing the effectiveness of our teaching methodologies. We hypothesize that to effectively address misconceptions, student culture must be taken into account. In addition, by analyzing student responses to misconception testing, we have taken the first steps in developing a concept inventory for telecommunications and networking.
This work augments a previous study on STEM undergraduate students’ preconceptions regarding Quality of Service (QoS) in telecommunications13, by giving the same survey to a larger number of students across different programs and countries and investigating the effects of culture and experience on preconceptions related specifically to QoS.
In this study, the survey was given to two new groups of students and the pre- and post-instruction responses were the analyzed. The first group was primarily from India and were studying towards a graduate degree in telecommunications; the second group was primarily from the USA and were taking a networking class as part of their undergraduate degree. The students were asked to respond either “yes” or “no” to multiple questions and then explain the reasoning behind their response. The data from each group was analyzed, the undergraduate data was then compared with data from the previous study, and the undergraduate and graduate data were compared to each other with respect to culture and experience 20.
In addition, a new survey was given to another set of graduate students to study preconceptions related to concepts in telecommunications that were not related to QoS. We used our overall results and analyzed the wording, key phrases and key words in their explanations, to create an initial concept inventory specific to telecommunications.
This concept inventory will allow instructors to prepare their instructional material and tune their didactic approaches to meet specific student need - some of which may be related to culture and experience.

AU - Mark J Indelicato
AU - Miguel Bazdresch
AU - George H Zion
AU - Joseph (Yossi) Nygate
AU - Surabhi M Sarda
CY - Columbus, Ohio
DA - 2017/06/24
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Analysis of Student Preconceptions Related to Quality of Service and Basic Principles in Telecommunications
UR - https://peer.asee.org/27591
DO - 10.18260/1-2--27591
ER -