Description of EduCOM: A Graphical Modeling and Programming Language for Teaching and Learning Digital Communication Systems

作者：Gunther Jake^*; Eames Brandon; Nelson Darin

来源：Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 2011, 19(4): 697-707.

DOI：10.1002/cae.20354

• communication engineering education
• systems engineering education
• communication systems
• simulation software

This paper presents EduCOM, a graphical language for teaching and learning digital communication systems. In EduCOM students build graphical models (i.e., block diagrams) of digital communication transmitters, channels, and receivers. Then EduCOM creates the shell of a C/C code realization of the graphical model, but it leaves the implementation of each block empty so that students are required to implement the functionality of the blocks in a low-level programming language such as C/C . Therefore, EduCOM goes beyond passive drag-drop-connect style activities and forces students to think more deeply about each operation performed on the signals in the system, and preliminary assessment results with a small set of students bear this point out. Students indicated that the mixture of graphical modeling and low-level programming provided by EduCOM is an improvement over pure graphical modeling or pure low-level programming in helping them learn about communication systems.

• 出版日期2011-12