Bring Your Own Device - Enabling Student-Centric Learning in Engineering Education by Incorporating Smartphone-Based Data Acquisition

Digitization and networking have rapidly advanced across society and the economy, necessitating an increase in students’ acquisition of theoretical and technical skills. Information and communication technology systems and technologies, along with their applications, have fundamentally changed in recent decades. Consequently, engineering didactics and education must reflect these changes. Traditional teaching approaches in fields like electrical and communication engineering involve specialized hardware and measurement technology, as well as data acquisition and statistical processing for immersive education. Remote teaching enables asynchronous learning, accommodating individual student needs. The Digital Learning and Teaching Fund at TU Dresden supports the deployment of digital teaching solutions. Data analysis and evaluation can be conducted using shared pre-recorded datasets. However, data acquisition remains crucial in remote learning environments. To address this, our project focuses on developing a system that utilizes off-the-shelf smartphones for sensor data collection and subsequent computer-based analysis. This approach harnesses the advanced sensor technology and open data interfaces available in modern smartphones, which has already been successfully employed in various teaching contexts, primarily in straightforward physics experiments.