Why Should I Teach Performance Evaluation to Students in Networking?

In this contribution, we share our view on teaching methodological topics in STEM disciplines and we report our experience on teachning performance evaluation to students in a M.Sc. focused on ICT for Smart Societies. This program aims to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills in ICT to drive innovation across various engineering fields. The focal point is communication networks, viewed as a collection of enabling technologies fundamental to enhancing engineering through information-driven approaches. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of the program, the students require methodological tools that can help them to understand problems in different contexts. The effort to approach problems from multiple perspectives is addressed by using tools, such as analytical modeling and simulation, in a complementary way. Performance evaluation well fits the need to propose to students general methodologies that can be applied to several fields. These methodologies push them to approach problems from different levels of abstraction, deriving holostic views, practicing creative and critical thinking.