Teaching Mobile Communication in an e-Learning Environment

This article presents a virtual course with the topic mobile and wireless communication systems. The structure of the tree sections of the course material content, the generic technology section, the wireless technology section, and the mobility management section, is presented. The main didactical approach of the virtual course is a guided excursion to which students enroll. The task sets, consisting of exercises and study directives, that the course teacher assigns each week to the students are described. The concept of step-by-step skill assimilation, which lies behind the student guidance process, is outlined together with descriptions of the different user skill levels. The course has been produced by Arcada Polytechnic as a part of a production team in the Finnish Virtual Polytechnic. The structure of the Finnish educational system together with the goals and structure of the Finnish Virtual Polytechnic are presented. The course development process is described in detail together with the software tools used to produce the course material. The graphical design of the learning platform is presented. The communicating dimension, the interface, and the esthetical dimension, and the layout are presented and analyzed in depth. The IT infrastructure needed to implement and use the learning platform of the course is described and assessed. Issues like how the students are registered and authenticated to the course are presented together with the tools for communication and interaction between student and teacher. General IT requirements together with specific both server (course provider) and client (student) side IT requirements are presented. Teaching and learning experiences, gathered from a wireless networking course held in spring 2005, are presented. In this wireless networking course Mobile IP animation was used to simplify both teaching and learning of mobile IP. Further development needs are also presented.