Physical Education and English Language Arts Based K-12 Engineering Outreach in Software Defined Networking (Extended Version)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel K-12 outreach program that teaches communication network principles through physical education and English Language Arts activities, aiming to enhance student understanding and interest in networking engineering.

Contribution

It presents a unique interdisciplinary outreach approach combining PE and ELA to teach complex networking concepts to K-12 students, with formative evaluation by teachers.

Findings

Positive impact on student perceptions of networking engineering

Increased student interest and self-efficacy in communication networks

Effective integration of technical concepts into non-technical subjects

Abstract

K-12 engineering outreach has typically focused on elementary electrical and mechanical engineering or robot experiments integrated in science or math classes. In contrast, we propose a novel outreach program focusing on communication network principles that enable the ubiquitous web and smart-phone applications. We design outreach activities that illustrate the communication network principles through activities and team competitions in physical education (PE) as well as story writing and cartooning in English Language Arts (ELA) classes. The PE activities cover the principles of store-and-forward packet switching, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) web page download, connection establishment in cellular wireless networks, as well as packet routing in Software-Defined Networking (SDN). The proposed outreach program has been formatively evaluated by K-12 teachers. A survey for the evaluation of the impact of the outreach program on the student perceptions, specifically, the students' interest, self-efficacy, utility, and negative stereotype perceptions towards communication network engineering, is also presented.