Work in progress - Creating an active learning environment for a computer networking class: Expert systems construction

In a freshman computer networking class, students are asked to build a home network. Instead of teaching them directly about concepts and rules of building such a system, they are required to construct an expert system that integrates those needed concepts and rules. The premise of this paper is that the process of creating expert systems engages students' higher-order thinking skills, such as analytical reasoning, synthesis of knowledge, meta-cognitive awareness and self-regulation, thus improves their problem-solving abilities. In the article, a model of creating an expert system for a home network is presented. This model consists of six development stages: (1) identifying a problem; (2) defining the problem domain; (3) specifying problem attributes and values; (4) specifying solutions; (5) generating rules and examples; and (6) selecting the right tool.