Running head: IOT IN EDUCATION

IOT in Education

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation
IOT IN EDUCATION 2

IoT in Education

Introduction

Internet on Things is a fast-growing phenomenon in academics that has been

accompanied by new possibilities and opportunities for the enhancement of both educational

institutions’ infrastructure and the teaching-learning process (Tsai, Lai & Vasilakos, 2014). IoT

can be described as the systematic technique of converging data and information gotten from

different kinds of sources to one virtual platform that exists within an internet infrastructure

(Marquez, Villanueva, Solarte & Garcia, 2016; Whitmore, Agarwal, & Da Xu, 2015). The

history of the concepts of IoT in general date back to the last decades of the 20 th century when an

improved coke machine was linked to the Internet for it to report the drinks contained (Atzori,

Iera, & Morabito, 2010). Therefore, due to its rapid growth, IoT in education has become a new

research area of interest among scholars and educationists.

Literature Review

In a survey on the roles of IoT in education, Khan, Sheikh & Gul (2018), affirm that

education as one of the most significant investments and global concerns, did not remain

resistant to novel technology progressions. This argument was based on their finding that with

the IoT vision; almost every other device became connected to the Internet, and as a result

completely changed the traditional model of education systems across the world (Al-Fuqaha,

Guizani, Mohammadi, Aledhari & Ayyash, 2015; Lee & Lee, 2015). Nevertheless, Majeed & Ali

(2018) alluded with Khan Et.al. (2018) by pointing out that IoT in Education is a two faceted

aspect due to its application both as a technological tool to boost academic infrastructure in

learning centers and as a discipline to teach essential concepts of computer science courses. IoT

technology is taking up a fundamental role in the enhancement of education at all learning levels
IOT IN EDUCATION 3

including school, college, and university education (Majeed & Ali, 2018). Therefore, it is clear

that from teacher to student, classroom to campus, almost everything in education has

significantly benefited from the IoT technologies.

In another study to explore the Internet of Education Things in rural underprivileged

regions in Thailand, Pruet, Ang, Farzin & Chaiwut (2015), discovered that despite the growing

adoption of internet technology in education, students were passively learning using the tablets

and computers in these areas. The research methods employed in this study included a

preliminary study, which was aimed at understanding students’ attitude and learning styles

towards the computer, designing the mobile learning platform based on the outcome of the

preliminary study, and eventually developing a model of the educational learning device

(Gómez, Huete, Hoyos, Perez, & Grigori, 2013). In particular, they noted that students in rural

schools had numerous difficulties in accessing learning contents over the internet due to the

schools' infrastructures that were either outdated or had an unreliable internet connection.

Based on this finding, Pruet et.al (2015) sought to design and develop an effective

resolution for students in underprivileged areas of Northern Thailand, which would offer them

with mobile learning platforms that work with the existing schools’ internet infrastructure. The

motivation behind the goal of their exploratory study was the belief that IoT would place

immense opportunities and challenges for tech developers and educators of the future. In turn,

this would enable them to discover new means of ensuring that the new learning strategies based

on their use are appropriate and accessible for all learners the 21st century (Pruet et.al, 2015).

Additionally, Aldowah, Rehman, Ghazal & Umar (2017), in assessing the effects of IoT

as a new educational tool in the academic field presented its advantages and the drawbacks in

students’ education. According to these authors, teachers cannot disregard the disruptive impact
IOT IN EDUCATION 4

of technology in today's educational institutions and are, therefore, required to be more flexible

and open in their communication with their students. The research methodology used in this

study to find answers to the legitimate question on the impacts of IoT in higher education was a

critical review of the Gartner's Top ten IoT technologies for 2017 and 2018 (Aldowah et al.,

2017). From the review, it was evident that learners are increasingly shifting away from paper

documentation towards smartphones, laptops, and tablets, which offers them the necessary

information at their convenience while enabling them to learn at their own pace (Matharu,

Upadhyay & Chaudhary,2014). This trend has also been found to provide convenience to

instructors, as the teaching activities become more student-centered and efficient (Kortuem,

Bandara, Smith, Richards & Petre, 2012; Meola, 2016). Therefore, we can conclude that teachers

can focus on students’ individual care and attention. Additionally, they can use IoT linked

devices with each of the learners in adapting their course as well as practical activities.

Despite the numerous contributions of IoT in education, key challenges have also been

noted in the literature. According to Al-Emran, Malik & Al-Kabi, (2019), the most prevalent

challenges to IoT in education include availability, reliability, performance, scalability, mobility,

interoperability, trust, management, security and privacy. Security and privacy is a concern in

IoT because its application involves collection and storage of data from students and any security

breach could disclose their personal information related to family financial background, an

individual’s medical record, or any other private information (Xia, Yang, Wang, & Vinel, 2012).

Concerning management, some applications, and devices might not compatible and may hinder

the institution's ability to build an IoT setup, which is both available and reliable to all learners

(Kaur & Kaur, 2017). Therefore, for effective implementation of IoT, an educational institution
IOT IN EDUCATION 5

must set up measures to ensure that both its teaching approaches and IT equipment support the

use of IoT in the classroom and general learning.

Summary and Conclusion

From the above-reviewed literature, it is apparent that IoT offers the following ways to

improve learning and teaching in education. Firstly, it has enabled students to access learning

resources from any computer and other devices that are connected to the internet (Maksimovic,

2017). Secondly, IoT in education has seen the use of intelligent devices that are equipped with

software and hardware applications in purported smart classrooms (Majeed & Ali, 2018).

Thirdly, it has made possible the collection and analysis of significant volumes of data from

wearable devices and sensors while making it easy for teachers to monitor students’

achievements and capabilities (Yan-lin, 2010).

These arguments have also been supported by the point of view that the influence of new

internet technologies is felt in many facets of education, including learning activities, the

personalized content, course presentations, knowledge sharing and ideas amongst students

(Bagheri & Movahed, 2016). In conclusion, the emerging concepts of IoT have significant

potential to eliminate all barriers in education, including language barriers, physical location, and

barriers related to economic development. Ideally, the amalgamation of education and

technology will lead to simpler and faster learning as it will implicitly improve the level of

knowledge of the of students.

References

[1] Aldowah, H., Rehman, S. U., Ghazal, S., & Umar, I. N. (2017, September). Internet of

Things in higher education: a study on future learning. In Journal of Physics: Conference

Series (Vol. 892, No. 1, p. 012017). IOP Publishing.

[2] Al-Emran, M., Malik, S. I., & Al-Kabi, M. N. (2019). A Survey of Internet of Things (IoT) in

Education: Opportunities and Challenges. In Toward Social Internet of Things (SIoT):

Enabling Technologies, Architectures, and Applications (pp. 197-209). Springer, Cham.

[3] Al-Fuqaha, A., Guizani, M., Mohammadi, M., Aledhari, M., & Ayyash, M. (2015). Internet

of things: A survey on enabling technologies, protocols, and applications. IEEE

communications surveys & tutorials, 17(4), 2347-2376.

[4] Atzori, L., Iera, A., & Morabito, G. (2010). The internet of things: A survey. Computer

networks, 54(15), 2787-2805.

[5] Bagheri, M., & Movahed, S. H. (2016). The effect of the Internet of Things (IoT) on

education business model. In 2016 12th International Conference on Signal-Image

Technology & Internet-Based Systems (SITIS) (pp. 435-441). IEEE.

[6] Gómez, J., Huete, J. F., Hoyos, O., Perez, L., & Grigori, D. (2013). Interaction system based

on internet of things as support for education. Procedia Computer Science, 21, 132-139.

[7] Kaur, J., & Kaur, K. (2017). Internet of Things: a review on technologies, architecture,

challenges, applications, future trends. International Journal of Computer Network and

Information Security, 9(4), 57.

[8] Khan, A. N., Sheikh, S., & Gul, M. (2018). Effect of School Environment on the

Development of Students' English Language Skills at Secondary School level in Khyber

Pakhtunkhwa.

[9] Kortuem, G., Bandara, A. K., Smith, N., Richards, M., & Petre, M. (2012). Educating the

Internet-of-Things generation. Computer, 46(2), 53-61.

[10] Lee, I., & Lee, K. (2015). The Internet of Things (IoT): Applications, investments, and

challenges for enterprises. Business Horizons, 58(4), 431-440.

[11] Majeed, A., & Ali, M. (2018, January). How Internet-of-Things (IoT) making the

university campuses smart? QA higher education (QAHE) perspective. In 2018 IEEE 8th

Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference (CCWC) (pp. 646-

648). IEEE.

[12] Maksimovic, M. (2017). Green Internet of Things (G-IoT) at engineering education

institution: the classroom of tomorrow. Green Internet of Things, 270-273.

[13] Marquez, J., Villanueva, J., Solarte, Z., & Garcia, A. (2016). IoT in education: Integration

of objects with virtual academic communities. In New Advances in Information Systems

and Technologies (pp. 201-212). Springer, Cham.

[14] Matharu, G. S., Upadhyay, P., & Chaudhary, L. (2014, December). The internet of things:

Challenges & security issues. In 2014 International Conference on Emerging

Technologies (ICET) (pp. 54-59). IEEE.

[15] Meola, A., 2016, How is IoT in education changing the way we learn,

http://www.businessinsider.com/internet-of-things-education-2016-9

[16] Pruet, P., Ang, C. S., Farzin, D., & Chaiwut, N. (2015, June). Exploring the Internet of

“Educational Things”(IoET) in rural underprivileged areas. In 2015 12th International

Conference on Electrical Engineering/Electronics, Computer, Telecommunications and

Information Technology (ECTI-CON) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.

[17] Tsai, C. W., Lai, C. F., & Vasilakos, A. V. (2014). Future Internet of Things: open issues

and challenges. Wireless Networks, 20(8), 2201-2217.

[18] Whitmore, A., Agarwal, A., & Da Xu, L. (2015). The Internet of Things—A survey of

topics and trends. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(2), 261-274.

[19] Xia, F., Yang, L. T., Wang, L., & Vinel, A. (2012). Internet of things. International Journal

of Communication Systems, 25(9), 1101.

[20] Yan-lin, L. L. Y. Z. (2010). The Application of the Internet of Things in Education

[J]. Modern Educational Technology, 2(005).