Co-Creation as a Catalyst for Learning and Applying Wireless Network Concepts

This paper summarizes the impact of co-creating educational materials about wireless network concepts on graduate and undergraduate computer engineering students. Cocreating can provide benefits for faculty and students by increasing engagement, but there are also challenges with the process. This paper explains how faculty and students collaborated to co-create online educational modules about wireless network concepts. By co-creating with faculty members, graduate students broadened their understanding of cyberphysical systems, strengthened their research skills, and gained experience with teaching-related activities. This paper also presents pilot data about the integration of the co-created materials into advanced undergraduate and graduate computer engineering courses. By learning from the co-created materials, students showed learning gains that were similar to students who learned from traditional publisher-provided materials. Further, their class project choices reflected themes about wireless networking which had not been seen in previous iterations of these courses.