An Integrated View of Teaching and Learning for a Foundational Course on Computer Networking

This paper presents an integrated view of teaching and learning to address some of the obstacles to learning Computer Networking effectively. This view specifically addresses teaching and learning activity integration, peer integration, and teaching and assessment integration. As a result of this view, this paper prescribes effective approaches for lecturing, analytical problem-solving, experimental problem-solving, group-based learning, and assessments. These approaches have been applied to a foundational course on Computer Networking offered to junior students of a typical Computer Science or Computer Engineering curriculum. Students’ feedbacks on the effectiveness of these approaches are reported for a small class (54 students) and a big class (168 students). The feedbacks also show that students’ interests in Computer Networking are more dichotomized after taking the foundational course.