Assessing the Participatory Design of a Project-based Course on

Computer Network Applications

Felix Freitag, Ruben Tous and Leandro Navarro

Computer Architecture Department, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain

Keywords: Project-based Learning, Participatory Design.

Abstract:

New teaching methodologies which foster student involvement, such as project-based learning, are nowadays

part of the study curriculum of many engineering schools. Project-based learning courses, however, often build

upon other previously taught technical courses, where the technical content for the project to be developed

is studied. That type of course design focuses on building the transversal capabilities of students, and the

technical challenges of the project are the mean to acquire these non-technical skills. In this paper, we present

and assess a project-based course on computer network applications of a computer science school, which has

been designed to improve within the same course both the transversal and technical skills of the students.

The proposition of interest is that the course not only aims to train the students’ transversal skills by a group

work project, but also to practise new technical topics and technologies. We argue that the key element of the

proposed course design is that each student project group deﬁnes with the instructor the project they would like

to develop in the course. We present ﬁrst the design of the course and then an assessment with questionnaires,

which were conducted over two semesters with the students enrolled in the course. The obtained results

indicate that the students achieved both technical and transversal skills, while the instructors need to be ﬂexible

to adapt to diverse technical topics of the proposed projects.

1 INTRODUCTION

In the recent years, new teaching methodologies

which foster student participation have become part

of engineering study curricula. Project-based learn-

ing is one of these methodologies (Kokotsaki et al.,

2016). Its aims that students acquire more transversal

or non-technical competences like working on a com-

plex practical problem together in a group, the capac-

ity to manage projects, the oral and written presenta-

tion of the work, the capacity to learn independently

and being able to solve new problems.

One possible design of a project-based course

consists in the instructor proposing one single project

to all the student groups. Such a project is then de-

ﬁned in a way that leverages the technical knowledge

acquired by the students in previous courses, e.g. it in-

tegrates or applies this knowledge in a group project.

In this type of course design, principally no new tech-

nical knowledge is required to develop the project.

The focus is on reaching a deeper usage of the pre-

viously acquired technical skills, e.g. by working at

the level of application, to become more experienced

in the technologies through the project development.

This design of a project-based course which uses

a single project proposed by the instructor to all stu-

dent groups has some valuable features, but also limi-

tations: Among the desired features is that all the stu-

dents, after ﬁnishing the project, have faced the same

challenges, and by this, have undergone the same

learning process, leading to a homogeneous progress

among the students in their acquired skills. Among

the limitations of this design is that the participation

required from the students is limited to the comple-

tion of the steps deﬁned in the project exercise. Ad-

ditionally, such a course design rather deepens on the

previously acquired technical knowledge in terms of

the learning domains of Bloom’s taxonomy (W. An-

derson et al., 2000) than exploiting the possibility to

extend the technical knowledge of the students with

regards to integrating new technologies in the project.

In this paper, we consider a different design of a

project-based learning courses, which in addition to

practise the transversal skills of the students through a

group project, aims to integrate new technical knowl-

edge. We consider the course “Project on Computer

Network Applications”, given at the Computer Sci-

ence School of a Technical University of Catalonia in

368

Freitag, F., Tous, R. and Navarro, L.

Assessing the Participatory Design of a Project-based Course on Computer Network Applications.

DOI: 10.5220/0007719903680374

In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2019), pages 368-374

ISBN: 978-989-758-367-4

Barcelona.

Project-based courses are nowadays integrated

in the curricula of many computer science studies

(Pucher and Lehner, 2011) (Fincher and Petre, 1998)

(De los R

ıos et al., 2010). The course we present

in this paper has been held for several years and

experiences on different designs of the course were

gained, which allows us now to assess the question-

naires replied by students and draw consolidated con-

clusions.

The focus of this paper is to present the assess-

ment of this speciﬁc course design we have applied.

For this we analyze the replies which students gave us

via questionnaires on the course during two semesters

and discuss the overall effects of the course design.

We look at aspects with regards to participation of the

students in choosing the project work and active par-

ticipation in the selection of the project they wish to

elaborate in group.

2 PROBLEM STATEMENT

2.1 Course Objectives

The course Project on Computer Network Applica-

tions

in the Computer Science Curriculum of the

Technical University of Catalonia, which is the sub-

ject of this study, has both transversal and technical

competences which are summarized as follows:

Transversal competences:

• Teamwork: to work as a team member and con-

tribute to develop projects in a pragmatic way

while taking into account the available resources.

• Entrepreneurship and innovation: to develop cre-

ativity, entrepreneur spirit and detect innovation

tendency, have initiative which generate opportu-

nities.

• Effective oral and written communication: to

communicate knowledge, procedures, results and

ideas orally and in a documented way.

Speciﬁc technical competences:

• ICT infrastructure installation: deﬁne, plan and

manage the installation of the ICT infrastructure

of the organization which includes to select, de-

sign, deploy, integrate, evaluate, build, manage,

exploit and maintain the hardware, software and

network technologies.

https://www.ﬁb.upc.edu/en/studies/bachelors-degrees/

bachelor-degree-informatics-engineering/curriculum/

syllabus/PTI

• ICT infrastructure operation: guarantee that the

ICT systems of an organization operate correctly,

are secure and adequately installed, documented,

personalized, maintained, updated and substi-

tuted, and the people of the organization receive

a correct ICT support.

• ICT system design: design solutions which in-

tegrate hardware, software and communication

technologies and the capacity to develop speciﬁc

solutions of systems software for distributed sys-

tems and ubiquitous computation devices, which

includes to conceive systems, applications and

services based on network technologies, to im-

plement and manage systems, to design, establish

and conﬁgure networks and services.

2.2 Design Challenge

Project-based courses in engineering studies of-

ten focus on the students to acquire non-technical

skills and to prepare students to gradually develop

into professional practitioners (Sindre et al., 2018).

From the perspective of the study career curriculum,

the project-based courses complement the technical

courses of the career. In the project-based course, the

previously acquired technical skills are put into prac-

tise by the development of a project in a group work.

As indicated in the previous section, the project-

based courses we consider aims to develop transver-

sal and technical competences. In the context of our

course, the technical competences which are targeted

address speciﬁcally the areas of computer networks

and distributed applications.

Therefore, the challenge consists in designing a

project-based courses which fosters students to ac-

quire the transversal competences, while at the same

time contributes to improve the technical skills of the

students in information technologies.

3 DESIGN OF THE

PROJECT-BASED COURSE

The course “Project on Computer Network Applica-

tions” has 6 ECTS credits, which corresponds to a to-

tal dedication of around 150 hours to the course. In

the study curriculum, this course addresses third year

students. These students have selected in the third

year the focus on information technologies within a

four year study plan for the undergraduate computer

science studies. The courses in the ﬁrst and second

year of the are obligatory and not selective. There-

fore the preparation of the students enrolled in the

Assessing the Participatory Design of a Project-based Course on Computer Network Applications

369

course “Project on Computer Network Applications”

can be considered homogeneous with regards to pre-

vious knowledge.

Following the technical competences described in

the previous section, the technical context, which the

project of this course should address, includes in-

formation technologies, computer networks and dis-

tributed applications.

As to the transversal competences of the course,

the students should develop non-technical skills

through the experience of conducting and organizing

a project in a group work, and presenting and docu-

menting it.

In the case we present here, the previous knowl-

edge of the students about the targeted technical con-

text can be classiﬁed as being familiar with the fun-

damentals, since these topics were presented at an in-

troductory level in a previous course on networking in

the second year of the study curriculum.

Similarly, while problem-based learning is also

part of the teaching methodology in the subjects of

the ﬁrst and second year, a formal course on project

development is not given in any previous course of the

study plan. Therefore, students have a certain previ-

ous experience with problem-based learning, but not

at the scale of an engineering project.

There is a key design decision in a project-based

course between deﬁning a single project to be de-

veloped by all student groups or deﬁning individual

projects for each student group.

One of the advantages of a single project deﬁned

by the instructor is that the parameters of the project

to be developed are more controlled. These param-

eters include the technical scope of the project, and

the difﬁculty and challenges that will arise during the

project development. Therefore, a clear list of objec-

tives can be established and their fulﬁllment can be

veriﬁed both by the students and the instructor.

Among the disadvantages of a single project de-

sign we can identify that the project proposal must

make a previous choice of technologies to be in-

cluded, done by the instructor. The choice will need to

focus on certain relevant technologies, but must also

exclude others in order to ﬁt to the scope and dimen-

sion of the effort the project is designed for. Another

limitation is that the students cannot participate in the

project deﬁnition, and this fact may not fully exploit

the motivation potential, which a project development

can create in students.

The advantages of each student group develop-

ing an individual project include a better response to

incorporate individual preferences. For instance, a

speciﬁc project proposal may integrate technologies

which each student is interested to explore. Another

effect is that having participated in the project pro-

posal usually produces a higher motivation in the stu-

dent in developing the project.

Conducting individual projects in the project-

based course, however, has also some difﬁculties.

One important issues is that the risk of the project is

not always clear at the project deﬁnition phase. This

fact happens when the project builds on less known

or recent technologies, for which less documentation

and experience is available to take an appropriate de-

cision. Another difﬁculty for the instructor is the eval-

uation and comparison of different projects after com-

pletion. Since each project has had its speciﬁc difﬁ-

culties, often mostly technical but sometimes also in

the group organization, establishing too speciﬁc eval-

uation criteria may not ﬁt to all types of projects.

Taking into account the advantages and disadvan-

tages of these two options, we have chosen for the pre-

sented project-based course the design of individual

projects for each student group. An important reason

was the potentially higher motivation of the students

to develop a project in which they participated from

the beginning by deﬁning the project.

Figure 1 shows the overall course structure over

the time of 15 weeks. The course starts in a ﬁrst

part with some laboratory exercises, where hands-

on works are performed. These laboratories include

exercises with Web applications, Web API design,

JSON data representation and blockchain. The labo-

ratories help to introduce a few potentially interesting

technologies for project proposals. During the ﬁrst

two weeks, the students form project groups with 3-

5 participants. Within the ﬁrst four weeks, in which

the laboratory exercises are carried out, each student

group develops a project proposal. The proposed

project is developed in the second part of the course

during around 10 weeks. The time of the 6 credit

course of around 150 hours is distributed to roughly

one third to the initial classes and laboratories of the

course, including the proposal preparation, and two

thirds of the time to project development and prepara-

tion of the project deliverables.

The deﬁnition of the project proposal is carried out

in interaction with the instructor. Interesting topics

are initially identiﬁed in a brain-storming session with

the students and discussed subsequently. The students

present preliminary ideas and then in an iterative pro-

cess with the instructor, the student groups consoli-

date a pre-proposal into a ﬁnal documented project

proposal. The proposal is presented in a public ses-

sion to all participants of the course.

The project development in the second part of the

course then carries out the work plan established for

the project. A mid-term presentation validates the

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370

achieved progress and by the end of the course, a

project report is delivered and a ﬁnal presentation is

done by the students, which includes a demonstration

of the results.

Figure 1: Overall structure of the proposed project-based

course.

4 EVALUATION

We conduct an evaluation of the proposed course de-

sign by means of a questionnaire conducted with the

enrolled students after ﬁnalizing the course. The

questionnaire was run during two semesters when

the course was given, namely the ﬁrst and second

semester of the academic year 2017-18.

In the ﬁrst semester (indicated in the following

by 2017 18 Q1), the course had 28 students enrolled.

Out of the 28 students, 19 answered the questionnaire.

There were 7 group projects in this semester.

In the second semester (indicated in the follow-

ing by 2017 18 Q2), the course had 26 students en-

rolled. Out of the 26 students, 18 answered the ques-

tionnaire. Like in the ﬁrst semester, the course had 7

group projects.

The questionnaire was addressing different as-

pects of the course to understand if the chosen de-

sign, e.g if developing individual and different group

projects instead of a single common one, was per-

ceived positively. The answers to the questions were

typically numerical values (scores) with a range from

1 to 5, were 1 was the minimum (not afﬁrmative) and

5 the maximum (afﬁrmative) value.

4.1 On the Project Deﬁnition Possibility

In the chosen design of the presented project-based

course, the students of the project groups were en-

couraged to deﬁne in collaboration with the instructor

the project to be developed. The question in the ques-

tionnaire asked the students on the value which they

give to the possibility for participation in the project

deﬁnition.

The Figures 2 and 3 present the answers given by

the students for semester 1 and semester 2, respec-

tively. It can be seen that in both semesters, there

is a clear afﬁrmative score between 4 and 5. That is

the students considered important having been able to

participate in the project deﬁnition.

Figure 2: Student valorisation of participation in the project

deﬁnition (course 2017 18 Q1).

Figure 3: Student valorisation of participation in the project

deﬁnition (course 2017 18 Q2).

4.2 On the Integration of Technologies

Achieved in the Project

The question asked if after ﬁnalizing the project de-

velopment, the students considered to have achieved

integrating interesting technologies in the project.

Assessing the Participatory Design of a Project-based Course on Computer Network Applications

371

The Figures 4 and 5 show the students’ answers

for each semester. There is a clear afﬁrmative score

in the answers for having been able to integrate inter-

esting technologies in the project.

Figure 4: Student valorisation of having achieved to

integrate interesting technologies in the project (course

2017 18 Q1).

Figure 5: Student valorisation of having achieved to

integrate interesting technologies in the project (course

2017 18 Q2).

4.3 On Exceeding the Initial

Expectations about Technologies

This question aimed to identify if the initial expecta-

tions of the students with regards to the number of

technologies were exceeded by the development of

their project.

The Figures 6 and 7 present the students’ answers

for both semesters. While in the ﬁrst semester there

were two students which answered negatively to the

question, all other answers were given with a score of

3 to 5. The answers indicate that for the majority of

students, the initial expectations on the applied tech-

nologies were exceeded.

Figure 6: Student valorisation on the technologies applied

exceed the intitial expectations (course 2017 18 Q1).

Figure 7: Student valorisation on the technologies applied

exceed the intitial expectations (course 2017 18 Q2).

4.4 On Having Preferred a Pre-deﬁned

Project or Not

This question asked the students if they had preferred

a single pre-deﬁned project, i.e. not deﬁned in a par-

ticipatory way among the group of students and the

instructor.

In Figures 8 and 9 the answers on this question

are depicted. From the answers we can identify two

groups of students, on larger group (a clear majority)

which give a low score, i.e. does not prefer a pre-

deﬁned project, and another smaller group which had

preferred to have a pre-deﬁned project.

Figure 8: Student valorisation on preference for pre-deﬁned

project (course 2017 18 Q1).

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372

Figure 9: Student valorisation on preference for pre-deﬁned

project (course 2017 18 Q2).

4.5 On the improvement of the

students’ technical skills

The challenge for the design of the course was on one

hand to achieve the transversal competences through a

project-based learning methodology, but on the other

hand also to improve the students’ technical skills.

The question aimed to know if the students perceived

that their technical skills had improved.

The Figures 10 and 11 show the answers of the

students. It can be seen that the most chosen value

was 4, i.e. the students considered that their technical

skills had improved, but not always at the maximum

(score 5). This result is afﬁrmative for the design of

the course, but the results also indicate that there may

be room for further improvement in this aspect.

Figure 10: Student valorisation on preference for pre-

deﬁned project (course 2017 18 Q1).

4.6 Technical Scope of Projects

After ﬁnalizing the projects at the end of the course,

the students often write a brief overview of their tech-

nical project on the course Wiki

. From this Wiki we

can obtain an initial orientation on the technical con-

tent of the projects.

http://wiki.ﬁb.upc.es/pti/index.php/Portada

Figure 11: Student valorisation on preference for pre-

deﬁned project (course 2017 18 Q2).

It can be seen that the projects done by the stu-

dents are diverse in their technical content as well as

in their ambition. There are projects which are based

on proven tools, e.g. consolidated Web frameworks,

and others which experiment and integrate very recent

technologies, e.g. blockchain. Most projects target

the applications layer of computer networks and focus

on some type of Web-based distributed applications.

Less frequent are projects focusing on lower levels of

the networking protocol stack. In terms of applica-

tion domains, the spectrum of the areas addressed in

the projects is very broad, and often the application

context chosen seems to be inspired by current popu-

lar applications.

4.7 Summarizing Remarks

The overall results from the questionnaire (answered

by in total 37 students over two semesters of the

course) indicate that the students perceived positively

the chosen design of the course, i.e. developing in-

dividual projects by each student group instead of a

single pre-deﬁned project.

The results indicate that this design also enabled

the students to work with a large number of technolo-

gies. At the end of the project, the initial expectations

of the students with regards to the number of tech-

nologies experienced were exceeded.

According to the replies to the questionnaire, the

design of the course also achieved some improvement

in the technical skills of the students.

Another positive effect we observed which is in-

teresting to mention is that by working with individ-

ual projects, that students not only learned about the

speciﬁc technologies used in their own project, but

by participating in project presentations of the other

groups, they also got introduced to additional tech-

nologies used in the other projects. Contrarily, with

the design of a single project for all student groups,

this effect would not have happened.

Assessing the Participatory Design of a Project-based Course on Computer Network Applications

373

Regarding the instructor experience, for this kind

of course design, the instructors need to be ﬂexible

and adapt to the different interests and topics which

the students propose. A clear assessment of the risk of

a technology is not always possible a priori, for which

a project work plan sometimes needs to be redeﬁned

along the project duration if a chosen technology pro-

duces unforeseen difﬁculties.

An important aspect to state is that the chosen de-

sign enables an active participation of the students

in the course. The questionnaire showed that a very

large part of the students appreciated the opportunity

to participate in the project deﬁnition, but we could

also observe that there was a smaller group of stu-

dents, which had preferred working on a pre-deﬁned

project.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper presented and assessed a speciﬁc design of

a project-based course for computer science students.

Instead of all students conducting the group work on a

single project deﬁnition, in the presented design of the

course each student group, in collaboration with the

instructor, deﬁnes an individual project from scratch,

which subsequently is developed by the student group

during the course.

The results from the questionnaire answered by

the enrolled students during two semesters conﬁrm

the positive perception of the presented course design

over the alternative of each student group developing

the same project deﬁned by the instructor. The ques-

tionnaire furthermore indicated that this design con-

tributed not only to develop transversal skills through

a group work, but also the technical skills of the stu-

dents improved in terms of the technologies which

they could experiment with during the project devel-

opment.

There are several issues that may be addressed in

future work. One topic refers to how the student form

the project groups of the targeted four participants.

Currently, the students are encouraged to organize the

groups by themselves, and the lecturers only interact

actively if after the time limit any students are not in-

tegrated in a group or if there is a mismatch between

the technical scope of the proposed project and the

number of participants. This scheme, however, leads

often to project groups in which the participants know

each other in beforehand. It could be interesting to

explore what are the effects of other group formation

schemes, e.g. random formation of groups. Another

topic that could be interesting to be analyzed in more

detail is how the participatory design at the beginning

of the course is conducted, and if variations of the par-

ticipatory design for the deﬁnition the project could

produce other effects and learning outcomes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was partially supported by the Spanish

government under contract TIN2016-77836-C2-2-R.

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