Teaching Mobile Communication Concepts Using a Digital Serious Game: Observations of a 3-Year Online Pilot Case Study

Abstract

Students of Electrical and Computer Engineering report finding the subject of fundamentals of mobile communications and cellular networks especially attractive, because such networks play a central role in the mobile devices they use daily. Despite this interest, they report finding the abstract parts of the subject, associated with signal, information and communication theory, as comparatively much harder to grasp.

We have developed a digital serious game to illustrate concepts of signal and communication theory, and have tested it in a classroom with students from three consecutive years, in an online course for a degree in Telecommunications from a distance university. This work describes the experience and our results over time, and provides a broader perspective of possible approaches for similar engineering education contexts.