Global PBL for Environmental IoT Hiroyuki Chishiro
Yosuke Tsuchiya
Yoshihide Chubachi
Graduate School of Industrial Technology, Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, Japan
Graduate School of Industrial Technology, Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, Japan
Graduate School of Industrial Technology, Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology, Japan
Muhammad Saifullah Abu Bakar
Liyanage C De Silva
Faculty of Integrated Technologies, Faculty of Integrated Technologies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei Darussalam Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei Darussalam
ABSTRACT Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology has performed the global Project Based Learning (PBL) for environmental IoT with Universiti Brunei Darussalam (Brunei) and Unitec Institute of Technology (New Zealand) in 2015-2016, in order to address environmental monitoring in Brunei. We evaluate the effectiveness of this global PBL from various metrics including questionnaire and GitHub. Finally, we learn some lessons from this global PBL and suggest the direction of future global PBL.
CCS Concepts • Applied computing➝Collaborative learning
Keywords Global PBL; Environmental IoT
1. INTRODUCTION Project Based Learning (PBL) [1] is a teaching and learning method in which students actively solve real-world problems and gain knowledge and skills. Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology (AIIT) gives the master’s degree based on the PBL activity, called AIIT PBL, to master course students. Note that no bachelor and Ph.D. course students exist in AIIT. This is because the AIIT goals are as follows: (1) train super professionals who bears business establishment, (2) develop highly advanced professionals who can contribute to the industrial development in Tokyo, and (3) play a think-tank role in the support of industrial development. Unfortunately, AIIT does not strongly perform the PBL with other countries’ students/professors. We have performed the global PBL with other countries’ students/professors, in order to acquire following competencies: (1) develop international human resources by global themes, (2) establish a joint PBL class for international education, (3) improve Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3057039.3057040
the AIIT PBL by international project experiences, and (4) make international connections in academic/industrial world. Our previous global PBL was in 2008-2014 with Vietnam National University, Hanoi - University of Engineering and Technology (Vietnam), Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) (Brunei Darussalam), and Unitec Institute of Technology (UNITEC) (New Zealand) [2]. The themes of our previous global PBLs were to develop a Web application and robot service software for Internet of Things (IoT) [3, 4]. After the experiences by our previous global PBL, we discussed the theme of this global PBL with students/professors in Brunei and New Zealand and decided that the global PBL in 2015-2016 addressed environmental monitoring by IoT in Brunei. This is because Bruneian sometimes suffers from adverse environment situations such as flood/landslide. In addition, environmental IoT [5, 6, 7] is an important theme to address environmental monitoring by IoT. We presented this global PBL for environmental IoT to develop global human resources in 2015-2016. This global PBL is performed as a global service application development course in Education Network for Practical Information Technologies (enPiT) [8], which is an education project for practical IT human resources and is performed by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in Japanese government. There are four areas in enPiT: cloud computing, embedded systems, security, and business applications. AIIT participates in the area of business applications in enPiT and we consider our environmental IoT system for business. According to the curriculum of enPiT, the project lengths of the activities were combined with (1) the PBL for 10 weeks in 2015 and (2) the PBL for 8 weeks in 2016. We evaluate the effectiveness of this global PBL from various metrics including questionnaire and GitHub [9], which is a webbased version control repository. Finally, we learn some lessons from this global PBL and suggest the direction of future global PBL. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces the environmental conditions in Brunei. Section III presents this global PBL in 2015-2016. Section IV evaluates the effectiveness of this global PBL. Section V compares our work with related one and Section VI concludes this paper.
2. ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS IN BRUNEI This section describes some environmental conditions in Brunei. Brunei is located in Southeast Asia and sometimes suffers from
squall (sudden heavy rain and wind). Due to the squall, floods can occur in low lying areas [10]. In addition, more than 85% of Bruneian lives in the coastal area and most of the major economic activities are confined to this zone. Hence, we thought to address the environmental monitoring of flood in Brunei. We did an interview about environmental conditions with students/professors in UBD. From this interview, we knew that landslide is also an environmental condition in some parts of Brunei and is caused by squall as well as flood. We investigated soil around UBD and learned that there is much reddish soil, which is easy to generate landslides in general. Therefore, the monitoring of environmental conditions due to flood/landslide in Brunei is a timely topic.
3. GLOBAL PBL FOR ENVIRONMENTAL IOT
location. The temperature and humidity sensors get the climate information at the deployed location by measuring the temperature and humidity. The ultrasonic distance sensors measure the water level to detect floods. The reason why we use EBs in our environmental IoT is because the cost is also important to deploy our system in coastal areas of Brunei, which are very large and require several thousand of EBs. Next servers analyze data and send emergency alarm if flood/landslide are detected. Finally, occupants will get to know the flood/landslide information from servers, to avoid flood/landslide, and then they can search for evacuation site. Examples of notification methods of flood/landslide information are E-mail, Twitter [11], and Slack [12], which is a cloud-based team collaboration tool. Now we introduce this global PBL in 2015-2016 as follows. In particular, we present the overview of the developed system for flood/landslide detection systems and explain the team members and roles of each global PBL.
3.1 Global PBL in 2015 We developed a flood detection system in 2015, in order to detect floods easily. The overview of flood detection system is as follows.
Figure 1. Concept of Our Environmental IoT
EBs: Raspberry Pi
Server: Amazon Web Service [13]
Notification Method: Twitter [11]
Programming Language: Python
The GitHub of flood detection system is at [14] but this is a private repository. Hence, the source code of flood detection system is not available for public.
Figure 2. Schedule of Global PBL in 2015
Figure 3. Team Role of Global PBL in 2015
This section presents this global PBL for environmental IoT in 2015-2016. The motivation of this global PBL is to address environmental monitoring in Brunei by IoT. Figure 1 shows the concept of our environmental IoT. First of all, flood/landslide occur due to much squall. In order to detect flood/landslide, many Embedded Boards (EBs) can be deployed in coastal areas of Brunei, collect data from sensors, and send data to servers. Examples of sensors on EBs are water level sensors, temperature and humidity sensors, and ultrasonic distance sensors. The water level sensors detect the water invasion at the specific
Figure 2 shows the schedule of global PBL in 2015. The kickoff meeting was held on Sep. 12, 2015 with the UBD, UNITEC, and AIIT teams. In the kickoff meeting, we introduced ourselves and shared the contact information. The PBL was performed from Oct. 3 to Dec. 12, 2015 (10 weeks). The remote meeting was performed by Skype [15]. The enPiT program presentation was held on Feb. 27, 2016 and we showed the demonstration of landslide detection system. The AIIT team has six members. Four members are both master course students in AIIT and business people. Remaining two members are not students in AIIT but business people. That is to say, all members are business people and their ages are approximately 25-55. Note that all business people in 2015-2016 cannot use the work time in their companies and can use the spare time to contribute to this global PBL. In contrast, the UBD team has six members. They are bachelor course students in UBD and their ages are approximately 20. The UNITEC team has four members. They are master course students and their ages are approximately 25. Figure 3 shows the team role of global PBL in 2015. The UBD (Brunei) team did marketing research, proposed several ideas, and implemented hardware. The UNITEC (New Zealand) team proposed several ideas and implemented software. The AIIT (Japan) team managed the project, defined requirement, and designed hardware/software. The time zones in three countries are different: Brunei is GMT+8, Japan is GMT+9, and New Zealand is GMT+12. While New Zealand performs the daylight-saving time in 2015 (i.e., 3:00AM Apr. 3 - 2:00AM Sep. 27), the time zone is GMT+13. Therefore, we hold the meeting with considering the difference of each time zone.
4.1 Questionnaire There are 21 questions in our questionnaire. 1) - 8) are the 5-level quantitative questions and 9) - 21) are qualitative ones. The details of 21 questions are as follows. 1)
How long is your study in global PBL?
2)
How is your difficulty in global PBL?
3)
How is your satisfaction in global PBL?
4)
How is your recommendation in global PBL?
5)
How is your contribution in global PBL?
6)
How much do you understand other countries’ cultures, environments, and customs?
7)
How much do you improve your online communication skills (e.g., Skype and/or Slack)?
We developed a landslide detection system in 2016, called TochiSlide. TochiSlide is a Web application to share users’ landslide information. Users can post landslide information to TochiSlide, get past and current landslide information in World Map to detect and avoid landslides, and search evacuation site easily. In this global PBL, the internet part of TochiSlide was developed. The overview of flood detection system is as follows.
8)
How much do you improve your management skills?
9)
What are good points in global PBL?
Server: Heroku [16]
14) What is your learning in global PBL?
Notification Method: Slack [12]
15) Did you develop services about other countries’ features?
Programming Language: Ruby
16) Are you in good relationships with other countries’ members?
Figure 4. Schedule of Global PBL in 2016
Figure 5. Team Role of Global PBL in 2016
3.2 Global PBL in 2016
10) What are bad points in global PBL? 11) What is your impression in global PBL? 12) If you perform global PBL again, what do you care? 13) What is useful in global PBL?
The source code of TochiSlide is available at [17].
17) Do you continue to learn about global PBL?
Figure 4 shows the schedule of global PBL in 2016. The kickoff meeting was held on Sep. 19, 2016 with the UBD and AIIT teams. In the kickoff meeting, we introduced ourselves and shared the contact information as well as that in 2015. The PBL was performed from Oct. 1 to Nov. 26, 2016 (8 weeks). The remote meeting was performed by Skype and Slack. The enPiT program presentation was held on Mar. 11, 2017 and we showed the demonstration of TochiSlide.
18) What is your new finding in global PBL?
The AIIT team has six members. Three members are both master course students in AIIT and business people. Remaining three members are not students in AIIT but business people. The AIIT team members in 2016 are similar with those in 2015. In contrast, the UBD team has eight members. They are bachelor course students and their ages are approximately 20. Compared to the global PBL in 2015, the UNITEC team does not participate in that in 2016. Figure 5 shows the team role of global PBL in 2016. The UBD (Brunei) team used the application (i.e., TochiSlide), deployed an application in real environments, and gave proper suggestions to improve the application. The AIIT (Japan) team managed the project and designed/implemented hardware/software. The application was developed by Scrum [18], which is an agile-based development method. By Scrum, we showed the weekly demo and got the review from the attendance including professors, external evaluators, and other students.
4. EVALUATIONS This section describes the evaluations of this global PBL. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this global PBL, there are two metrics: (1) questionnaire and (2) GitHub. The following subsections describe the details and results of each metric.
19) What is your expectation in global PBL? 20) What is your fun in global PBL? 21) What is your painful thing in global PBL? Figure 6 shows the answers to questions 1) - 8). There are 19 answers from 30 members and the answer rate is approximately 63.3%. In overall results, the trends of answers varied. We first showed the answers to questions 1) - 8) in detail and next picked up some answers to qualitative questions 9) - 21). In Figure 6(a), the length of study varied and many members studied in 1 hour - 4 hours per week. Interestingly, the length of study of one member in UBD 2016 was above 13 hours per week, and hence the member strongly contributed to develop TochiSlide. In Figure 6(b), many members answered that this global PBL was difficult or very difficult. This is because the project length of this global PBL was only a few months according to the answers to question 10). In Figure 6(c), some members answered the question 3) by medium, strong, or very strong in this global PBL but a few members answered it by very weak. One member answered that this global PBL was difficult for communication according to the answers to questions 11) and 12). In Figure 6(d), many members improved their management skills by medium, strong, or very strong. This is because this global PBL strongly required management skills among countries due to network latency, time differences, and cultures. In Figure 6(e), many members recommended that this global PBL was medium, strong, or very strong. The significance of performing this global PBL was enough for members. In contrast, a few members recommended that this global PBL was weak or very weak. One reason is that the members evaluated this global
PBL as difficult or very difficult in Figure 6(b), and hence it was hard for them. In Figure 6(f), the contributions of most members were medium but those of a few members were very weak, strong, or very strong. The average contribution was medium but varied. In Figure 6(g), some members understood other countries’ cultures, environments, and customs. This global PBL contributed to understand them for international education. In Figure 6(h), some members improved their online communications skills using Skype and/or Slack by medium or strong but remaining members were very weak or weak. The project length of this global PBL was a few months and not so long, and hence the improvements of online communication skills strongly depended on each member. The answers to question 9) showed that the good point of this global PBL was an experience to develop an application with other countries’ members. The answers to question 10) showed that the bad point in this global PBL was the language issue and management. Some members were not good at communicating other countries’ members in English. The bad communication caused the management problem. They did not have work in this global PBL and were idle, which resulted in bad impression. The answers to question 11) showed that the impressions of some members were the communication problems in this global PBL. One reason is that our communication language was English. Japanese and Bruneian are not English native speakers but New Zealanders are ones, and hence the English communication levels vary. The other reason is human relations. They have many different backgrounds with culture, religion, skill, and thinking. One member answered question 12) to care the communication if the member performs this global PBL again. The answers to question 13) showed that this global PBL was useful for communication, knowledge, collaboration, and opportunities with other countries’ members. The answers to question 14) showed that there were similar ones with question 13). The answers to question 15) showed that many members developed services about other countries’ features. They understood our global theme to address environmental conditions in Brunei. The answers to question 16) showed that many members are in a good relationship with other countries’ members. The results showed that they made international connections in the academic world. Therefore, many members continued to learn about this global PBL from the answers to question 17). The answers to question 18) showed that the new findings in this global PBL were details of other countries and the expectations in this global PBL from the answers to question 19) were similar ones. The answers to question 20) showed that some members were fun to make new friends and communicate with other countries’ members through meeting and collaboration. The answers to question 21) showed that the time management and language problems were painful for some members like the answers to question 11). By these answers from participated members, we concluded that this global PBL was difficult but attractive. The management and scheduling were important to perform the global PBL successfully. Many members thought that a few months were short to develop the environmental IoT systems. In order to improve the quality of global PBL, the longer project length (e.g., a half year or one year) should be considered. In addition, some members evaluated this global PBL as bad impression by bad communication, and hence we should care about the communication among countries.
4.2 GitHub We showed the results of the commitments to TochiSlide on GitHub in 2016. Due to the private repository, we did not show the results of commitments to a flood detection system on GitHub in 2015. The AIIT team members in 2016 only committed their software and the UBD team members did not commit it. Note that the AIIT team members are all business people, cannot use the work time in their companies, and can use the spare time to develop TochiSlide. Table 1 shows the punch card of commitments to TochiSlide on GitHub in 2016. Each time represents the number of commitments in each hour. Since the AIIT team members developed TochiSlide, holidays including Sunday and Saturday were large number of commitments. Interestingly, Wednesday was the largest number of commitments (i.e., 27) in all days of the week because Japanese business people usually work overtime weekday but Wednesday is no overtime weekday in most Japanese companies. Therefore, Japanese business people can commit much time to their software development of TochiSlide on GitHub, which is a unique Japanese culture. The reason why time 12 (12:00-12:59) on Wednesday was the largest number of commitments (i.e., 10) in all hours of all days of the week is because this hour is usually the lunch time in Japanese companies, and hence the AIIT team members made use of the lunch time to develop TochiSlide. From the results, we suggest that the global PBL with Japanese business people is performed on Sunday, Wednesday, and/or Saturday.
5. RELATED WORK Now we introduce related work about global PBLs among Japanese and other countries’ universities/colleges. Nagaoka University of Technology performed the global PBL with a high school in United States for the Metaverse [19]. Shibaura Institute of Technology (Japan) performed the global PBL with King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (Thailand) for the systems engineering design education program [20]. National Institute of Technology Sendai College (Japan) and National Institute of Technology Tsuruoka College (Japan) performed the global PBL with University Institutes of Technology (France), Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (Finland), Turku University of Applied Sciences (Finland), and King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology (Thailand) for the development of sequence control kit [21]. Ritsumeikan University (Japan) performed the global PBL with Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia) and Thammasat University (Thailand) for the innovative mind and intelligence [22]. Kyushu University (Japan) performed the global PBL with Aalto University (Finland) for the concrete solutions to social issues [23]. Our previous global PBL was in 2008-2014 with Vietnam National University, Hanoi - University of Engineering and Technology (Vietnam), UBD (Brunei), and UNITEC (New Zealand) [2]. The themes of our previous global PBLs were to develop a Web application and robot service software for IoT. Our previous global PBLs focused on IoT but did not focus on environment monitoring. Compared to these global PBLs, this global PBL focuses on addressing environment monitoring in Brunei by IoT, and hence the motivation and contribution of this global PBL are quite different from these global PBLs.
[6]
6. CONCLUSION We performed the global PBL for environmental IoT to address environment monitoring in Brunei. In particular, we developed the flood/landslide detection system. The effectiveness of global PBL was evaluated in questionnaire and GitHub. The questionnaires of both quantitative and qualitative questions showed that the good/bad points of this global PBL were revealed. The GitHub showed that the punch card of commitments strongly depended on the Japanese culture. Japanese business people committed their time for software development frequently on Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday. We suggest that performing the global PBL is good for Japanese business people on these days of the week.
[7]
[8] [9] [10]
In future work, we will improve the AIIT PBL by the experiments of this global PBL and refine the future global PBL according to the answers to questionnaires. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of flood/landslide detection systems, they will be deployed in Brunei. In addition, we will consider to use them for business in not only Brunei but also Japan because flood/landslide also occur.
[11] [12] [13] [14]
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
[15] [16] [17] [18]
This research was supported in part by Education Network for Practical Information Technologies (enPiT). We are thankful to all members who participated in this global PBL.
8. REFERENCES [1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
S. Dieter, T. Kelly, N. K. Suryadevara, and S. C. Mukhopadhyay, “Towards the Implementation of IoT for Environmental Condition Monitoring in Homes,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 13, no. 10, pp. 3846– 3853, May 2013. R. R. Filho, B. Porter, and G. Blair, “Environmental IoT: Programming Cyber-physical Clouds with High-level System Specifications,” in Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing, Dec. 2014, pp. 947–950. “enPiT: Education Network for Practical Information Technologies,” http://www.enpit.jp/, (Japanese). “GitHub,” https://github.com/. C. Thia-Eng, C. L. Ming, and M. S. M. Sadorra, Eds., The Coastal Environmental Profile of Brunei Darussalam: Resource Assessment and Management Issues. International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management Technical Reports 18, 1987. “Twitter,” https://twitter.com/. “Slack,” https://slack.com/. “Amazon Web Service,” https://aws.amazon.com/. “Flood Detection System,” https://github.com/UBD-AIITGlobal-Project, (Private Repository). “Skype,” https://web.skype.com/. “Heroku,” https://www.heroku.com/. “TochiSlide,” https://github.com/nyamco-enpit/TochiSlide. K. Schwaber and M. Beedle, Agile Software Development with Scrum, 1st ed. Prentice Hall, Oct. 2001. D. M. Barry, H. Kanematsu, Y. Fukumura, N. Ogawa, A. Okuda, R. Taguchi, and H. Nagai, “International Comparison for Problem Based Learning in Metaverse,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Education and Research, Aug. 2009, pp. 60–66. M. Inoue, H. Hasegawa, K. Mano, Y. Furukawa, A. Yamazaki, K. Aank, and M. Tachibana, “Systems Engineering Design Education based on Multidisciplinary and Global Project based Learning,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Design Research and Education, Jul. 2014, pp. 53–61. K. Yajima, T. Okumura, J. Sugaya, Y. Takeichi, and J. Sato, “Development of Sequence Control Kit and A Proposal of Global Engineering PBL Education,” in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Oct. 2015, pp. 162–166. “Global PBL Program for Innovative Mind and Intelligence | Ritsumeikan University,” http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/international/aims/eng/. “Global PBL Program | QREC | Kyushu University,” http://qrec.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/news-en/20141006_1/.
[19] P. C. Blumenfeld, E. Soloway, R. W. Marx, J. S. Krajcik, M. Guzdial, and A. Palincsar, “Motivating Project-Based Learning: Sustaining the Doing, Supporting the Learning,” Educational Psychologist, vol. 26, no. 3–4, pp. 369–398, Jun. 1991. [20] Y. Tsuchiya, L. C. D. Silva, M. S. A. Bakar, Y. Chubachi, and M. Narita, “Robot Services Development by International Collaborative PBL(Project Based Learning) with Universities in Three Countries,” in Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on System Integration, Dec. 2015, pp. 650–655. [21] K. Ashton, “That ’Internet of Things’ Thing,” RFID Journal, vol. 22, no. 7, Jun. 2009, http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view/4986. J. Gubbi, R. Buyya, S. Marusic, and M. Palaniswami, “Internet of Things (IoT): A vision, architectural elements, [22] and future directions,” Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 29, no. 7, pp. 1645–1660, Sep. 2013. M. T. Lazarescu, “Design of a WSN Platform for Long-Term [23] Environmental Monitoring for IoT Applications,” IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics In Circuits and Systems, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 45–54, Mar. 2013. Table 1. Punch card of commits to TochiSlide on GitHub
Time (right)
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Total
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
3
0
0
1
3
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
9
Day of the Week (down) Sunday Monday
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
5
Tuesday
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Wednesday
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
5
10
1
0
0
4
2
3
0
0
0
0
0
27
Thursday
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
Friday
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
3
Saturday
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
3
1
6
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
11
Total
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
6
8
11
10
5
2
4
2
3
3
1
0
0
0
56
(a) Answer to Question 1): How long is your study in global PBL?
(b) Answer to Question 2): How is your difficulty in global PBL?
(c) Answer to Question 3): How is your satisfaction in global PBL?
(d) Answer to Question 4): How is your recommendation in global PBL?
(e) Answer to Question 5): How is your contribution in global PBL?
(f) Answer to Question 6): How much do you understand other countries’ cultures, environments, and customs?
(g) Answer to Question 7): How much do you improve your online communication skills (e.g., Skype and/or Slack)?
(h) Answer to Question 8): How much do you improve your management skills?
Figure 6. Answers to Questions 1) - 8)
