Collaborative Research: Sizing Up Physical Computing to Explore Threshold Concepts in Cyber-Physical Systems

As the applications of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) continue to advance, it is becoming critical to address the educational challenges and needs associated with cultivating a competitive U.S. workforce with competence in CPS. However, given the relative youth of CPS technology, a crucial challenge lies in characterizing what key concepts are necessary for CPS mastery. Furthermore, the lack of collaborative CPS learning tools has resulted in a trend of solitary learning practices among students, which contradicts the collaborative nature of CPS design practice. This project seeks to overcome these challenges by designing and implementing a physical computing testbed that will foster problem-based, collaborative learning of CPS concepts. The testbed will allow groups of students, co-located around a table, to interact with CPS using a tangible-user interface. As a generative source of informal learning and sense-making, the testbed will help foster a social approach to CPS education, while advancing our understanding of the discipline-specific concepts required for CPS mastery.The project aims to develop a physical computing testbed for collaborative, problem-based CPS learning to explore and characterize the CPS discipline’s threshold concepts – which represent transformative, and potentially difficult-to-grasp, ideas that integrate multiple concepts in a given discipline. The project will first engage CPS experts in academia and industry through a Delphi study to seek consensus on the fundamental concepts necessary for CPS mastery. Next, the research approach will intersect threshold concepts with collaborative problem-based learning (PBL) to identify key formative learning experiences necessary for mastering CPS design concepts. These key formative learning experiences, anchored in student-centered threshold concepts, will be investigated by engaging students in multi-stage problem scenarios called model-eliciting activities. During the model-eliciting activities, their interactions with one another and the testbed will be analyzed using constructivist grounded theory. A comprehensive CPS concept inventory and innovative classification of threshold concepts will be created by integrating the various data sources, leading to a new understanding of how best to leverage PBL and physical computing in CPS education. The findings will improve CPS learning capabilities in academia and enhance CPS design capabilities for practitioners, strengthening the core function of U.S. federal agencies in administering CPS ecosystems with broad societal impacts. The testbed will empower undergraduate students to engage in CPS learning through collaborative play, and the knowledge generated will benefit industry, defense, and critical infrastructure.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.