Improving ECE Education in Sub-Saharan African Countries Using the Mobile Studio Technology and Pedagogy

In today’s global and highly competitive world, human capital has been so important that finding, developing, and retaining highly qualified workers, that can function in high demand and high growth sectors such as Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is very critical. The higher education sector of Africa has been decimated by the lack of funding and shortage of qualified instructors [1]. The shortage is magnified in STEM areas that require advanced training for the instructors and expensive equipment to conduct the hands-on laboratories. The lack of dependable laboratory equipment, especially in engineering education, has led higher education institutions in developing nations to focus more on the theoretical aspect of STEM education as compared to the practical applications. A possible solution to the problem is to develop collaborations with higher education institutions in the developed nations to provide targeted training on new pedagogy and state of the art mobile laboratory technology that will allow universities in Africa to teach STEM subjects with hands-on activities at a fraction of the cost of the regular equipment. This paper will discuss the results of an on-going three year collaboration between the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) departments of Morgan State University (MSU) and two universities in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa Institute of Technology (AAiT) and the Hawassa University Institute of Technology (iOTech-HU). The collaboration was based on the implementation of the Mobile Studio IOBoard TM (MS-IOBoard), which is a small, inexpensive hardware platform for use in a home, classroom or remote environment. When coupled with the Mobile Studio Desktop TM software, the system duplicates a large amount of the hardware valued at thousands of dollars. The project’s major goal was to enable hands-on exploration of ECE principles, devices, and systems that have historically been restricted to expensive laboratory facilities that are not readily available in most engineering schools in developing countries. The results of the collaborations have so far been very promising. The students enrolled in the ECE programs at AAiT and iOTECH-HU have been able to use the new mobile instrumentation and pedagogy to work on new laboratory experiments and advanced projects. If successful, this approach can serve as a model of efficient and cost-effective collaboration between engineering schools in the USA and Africa that can be used to improve ECE education in developing countries.