Collaborative assignment and project for teaching embedded and real-time software engineering course

Abstract

Teaching embedded and real-time software development course in curriculum is important because such software and hardware is used in many systems towards industrial revolution 4.0 (4IR). There is a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs offering similar courses in their computing and engineering curriculum. School of Computing under the Faculty of Engineering offers a course named Real-Time Software Engineering for undergraduate final year students in Software Engineering program as an elective course. This course implements alternative assessment projects as part of the course assessment criteria. The goal of this project is to ensure students appreciate complexity of software development project and equip them with multi-discipline skills in developing embedded real-time systems. It is also important to boost students' confident level in developing software with physical hardware. The projects adopt a collaborative assignment and project approach by incorporating physical mobile robots and Internet of Things (IoT) system into the problem-based and project-based learning environment. In the teaching and learning activities, learning occurs as students collaborate in completing their projects and engage with real-time concepts, theories, and practices in solving the physical systems' problem.