Guidelines for Teaching an Introductory Course on the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept coined after recent important developments in various research areas, especially wireless sensor networks. IoT refers to a new paradigm of the Internet in which various objects (or things), that were not traditionally part of the conventional Internet, attain the ability of being effective parts of communications networks. These things can actively collect, analyze, and exchange data with other things or systems connected to the Internet. Furthermore, these things can take useful actions through activating actuators that are attached to them (or at least situated close by). As IoT systems become popular in various domains and applications today, we can see rich resources on these systems available in the literature. Such literature motivates the efforts to develop courses on IoT for students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. However, a major challenge occurs in approaching a course that is supposed to compile topics tackling various, and diverse, technologies in a unified material for university students. In this paper, we draw on the experiences gained from teaching the Introduction to the Internet of Things course for three consecutive semesters at the American University of Kuwait. We aim at sharing the lessons learnt out of this experience with the teaching and research community. A main target of this work is to develop helpful guidelines on how to introduce undergraduate students to the emerging technologies of IoT.