RCSM Middleware Research Project
Test-bed: Smart Classroom

To evaluate RCSM, we are currently implementing a smart classroom test bed to facilitate teaching and collaborative learning among college level students. The test bed will facilitate different activities leading to efficient teaching and collaboration in a classroom. Some examples of these activities are as follows: 

• Automated synchronization and selection of lectures slides between the instructor's PDA and PC. The selection of new lecture slides may depend on factors, such as question raised by the students during the previous lectures, related materials, etc. The synchronization takes place before and after the scheduled lecture, where the class schedule, current time, and office location are used to analyze the situation. 

• Instructor assigns students into groups to solve a particular problem.  The PDAs of the students in the same group forms an ad hoc network. Using the ad hoc network, the PDAs aid the students exchange their ideas to solve the assigned problem. Each group then forms an ad hoc network. The instructor moves around the classroom to check the progress of each group, thereby dynamically joining in an ad hoc network so that the instructor's PDA can download the solution/ideas of the corresponding group. When the instructor leaves the group, and moves on to another group, his PDA terminates the membership with the current ad hoc network, and moves on to the next one.

• The laptop attached to the projector automatically detects, downloads, and displays the instructor's current lecture notes to the screen.

• The PDA of the instructor, who teaches multiple courses, finds and opens the appropriate files corresponding to the current course.

• Instructor's PDA, detecting that the instructor is running late for the class, opens a connection with the laptop in the classroom, and starts transferring lecture materials.

Each PDA will be equipped with RCSM, our context-sensitive and situation-aware middleware, which is co-designed in software and reconfigurable hardware. In our current design, each node in the test bed is expected to have the following configuration: