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Contribution: Portable learning instrumentation has become common in university classrooms and laboratories, but few publications assess the effects of these technologies on student retention. This paper addresses this under-researched connection between the use of portable learning technologies, incorporated into an Introduction to Computer Engineering course, and student retention. Background: The desire for active learning experiences has promoted the use of portable, hands-on technologies in classrooms and laboratories. However, published results from such efforts do not often assess the impact of such tools on student retention. In Fall 2015, the Kansas State University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering overhauled an introductory computer engineering course, incorporating portable learning tools with the aims to increase student retention, where a secondary focus related to helping students understand the limitations of portable hardware platforms. Intended Outcomes: The goal was to improve student confidence and the retention of first- and second-year students who took the course. Application Design: Laboratory exercises used portable technologies and focused on hardware limitations. Summative surveys helped to quantify the impact of the new course structure on student confidence. The retention of first- and second-year students who took the course was also investigated. Findings: Survey results indicated that the course transformation positively affected student confidence (measured directly and indirectly). Retention of second-year students who took the course improved to a two-year average of 51%, from a 40% average for the three prior years.

Future NASA plans include launching manned interplanetary missions to Mars and lunar destinations. These missions present new challenges that require rethinking of the extra-vehicular activity (EVA) suit design and associated communication systems. For example, there is a desire to collect more biomedical information from the astronaut to enhance safety and efficiency of EVA activities. Replacing the current wired biosensing within the suit with a wireless network would provide benefits such as the ability to monitor multiple vital signs and easily reconfigure the sensors to suit particular mission goals. In this paper, we study the propagation environment in a special domain of body area networks. In particular, within a space-suit where the outer cover-layer materials may be radio-opaque, containing the radio signals predominantly within the suit. This intrasuit wireless propagation environment is studied in various frequency bands, including 350 MHz, 433 MHz, 916 MHz, and 2.4 GHz, with signal attenuation used as the performance criterion. In all the frequencies studied, the intrasuit environment is shown to be conducive to wireless signal propagation, as the path loss is never more than 87 dB for a wide range of transmit-receive locations. Our findings suggest that ultrahigh frequency bands are the best candidate bands since there is interplay between the body conductivity favoring lower frequencies, and the difficulty of coupling RF energy into and out of the channel using suitably sized antennas favoring higher frequencies. The overall results suggest that deploying a wireless body area network inside the space suit is a promising solution for next generation missions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]