Developing a telecommunication engineering pipeline of communication networks

Abstract

To address the fundamental problem between the increasingly volume of knowledge and the limited study hours of engineering curriculum, we designed and implemented a telecommunication engineering pipeline for communication networks as a case study for the telecommunication engineering curriculum. In this program, students are required to accomplish systematically-designed theory and practice modules in order to develop their system capabilities progressively in a pipeline fashion. This pipeline follows a problem-oriented design in that the courses in this pipeline are closely related and provide in-depth theoretical foundation and hands-on practices coherently driven by a capstone project, so that the students are expected to develop system capabilities to design a communication system, component, or process to meet specifications by applying what they have learned in this telecommunication engineering pipeline. We also reported our implementation strategies at three levels: framework, courses and classes, with some initial results based on our empirical teaching practices on several courses including the introduction to information technology, fundamentals of information theory, computer networks, and network system design and labs. We also proposed the pedagogy applications of a WeChat-based utility on smartphones to provide the convenient teacher/student interaction and timely assessment in class. Our preliminary results have shown the positive feedback from students of implementing such a telecommunication engineering pipeline for communication networks.