Hybrid Platforms for IoT in the Classroom – A Competency Analysis and Performance Evaluation

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been increasingly deployed in the last decade. It can now integrate faster new technologies such as Large Language Models (LLMs) into the IoT layers. IoT applications, frameworks, and tools are becoming accessible through on-premises implementations or using cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). As a result, IoT is a mature approach to support computer science (CS) education. This paper presents how IoT is applied to College education to achieve CS competencies in Quebec, Canada. We present our experience in IoT teaching with on-premises and cloud deployments and describe a performance assessment framework for IoT platforms to simplify their selection process. Specifically, it examines the scalability (measured by throughput and average response time) of the ThingsBoard and AWS IoT Core platforms. Our findings show that a hybrid infrastructure that combines the best features of both platforms is the best suited solution for the proposed learning scenario.