Board # 47 : On Student Collaboration and Competition in an Inquiry-based Multi-user Communications and Jamming Exercise

This paper describes an inquiry-based laboratory exercise used to introduce senior-level electrical engineering students to the concepts of multiuser communication systems. The exercise includes both collaborative and competitive gaming elements, and requires students to share a single transmitter to send messages to multiple users. In the collaborative mode, the students are tasked with maximizing the minimum rate per user over the whole group, while in the competitive mode they are tasked with maximizing their individual rate while possibly jamming their peers. The paper presents results of a survey assessing student opinions of the relative benefits of collaboration and competition in this exercise. While the results depend heavily on student self-reporting, the data suggest that there is value in both the competitive and collaborative elements of this exercise, with some caveats.