David Reeping
University of Cincinnati, OH·Education Research
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) join computing with physical machinery. Robots, smart power grids and self-driving vehicles are examples.
- Fields
Education Research
Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
engineering education
cyber-physical systems
threshold concepts
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Reach expert consensus on the fundamental concepts needed to master cyber-physical systems through a Delphi study, structured rounds of surveys of academic and industry experts.
- Build a tabletop physical computing testbed with a tangible user interface, where groups of students handle physical objects to explore CPS concepts through collaborative problem-based learning.
- Identify the learning experiences that help students grasp CPS threshold concepts by analyzing student teams during model-eliciting activities with constructivist grounded theory, a qualitative analysis method.
- Create a comprehensive CPS concept inventory and a classification of threshold concepts by combining expert, observational and student data.
More about the research
Teaching students to design them is hard, partly because the field is young and no one has agreed on which core ideas students must master. Students also tend to learn CPS alone, even though real CPS design is collaborative work. This research asks what the essential, hard-to-grasp ideas of CPS are and how group, hands-on learning can help students master them.
Why it matters
Industry, defense and critical infrastructure all depend on engineers who can design cyber-physical systems. By pinning down the core concepts students struggle with and testing collaborative, hands-on ways to teach them, this work could help instructors build better CPS courses. It could also give undergraduates a more social, problem-based route into the field.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Danielle Oprean
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Education Research
Identify which features of web-based virtual field trips foster active spatial communication and group engagement among students, using thematic analysis of recorded instructor focus groups and design-based research in real courses.
Omobolanle Ogunseiju
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Education Research
Identify the competencies needed to advance sustainable construction with sensing technologies, using a Delphi expert-consensus study and focus groups with industry practitioners, and convert them into formal learning content.
Aleksandar Stankovic
Santa Clara University, CA·Engineering
Develop techniques combining manifold learning, which finds simple structure in complex data, with information-geometry model reduction to build physically interpretable models that still make quantitative predictions.
The school
University of Cincinnati: 18 labs on PI Pages, $740M a year on research, 275 research doctorates a year.
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