School of Science and Technology, United States International University (USIU)

USIU

School of Science and Technology

 The Project Title - Leveraging Laboratory Experiments with Raspberry-Pi ‘Lab Mfukoni’

Abstract

A lot has been said about teaching with experiments set up with virtual Labs environment. While this is an effective way of demonstrating concepts, it is not very different from teaching a four-stroke combustion engine with only diagrams, or using emulators and simulators. It is very different from working with the real engine. The Raspberry-Pi is a single board computer almost the size of a credit card, having the capability of desktop or laptop computer functions. What is good about it is the portability, ability to make and break the experiments, which cannot be easily done with the desktop or laptop computers. As such it is suitable for computer applications kit, ranging from sensor environment, microcontroller environment, and programming environments. The United States International University-Africa (USIU-A) is proposing to adopt the Raspberry-Pi experimental environment with the objective of giving both the students and the lecturers the desktop power at a very low price. USIU-A intends to collaborate with University of Nairobi’s Institute of Computing and Informatics. It is expected that through well-designed experiments, 60 students will acquire hands-on experience for both in-lab and post-lab experiments on this first case. In the latter case, the students may continue with open-lab experiments or homework since they will be able to carry the kits to their homes on the concept of ‘Lab-Mfukoni’. USIU-A intends to use the Raspberry kits for both undergraduate and post graduate courses with target outcome of developing problem solving application and teaching modules for scalability.