A project-based competitive learning scheme to teach mobile communications

This paper presents a project-based learning experience to teach mobile communications courses, carried out at Alcala University, Madrid, Spain. The experience consists of a competition among teams formed by students, who act as consultant companies working for imaginary operators. The objective of the teams is to obtain the best network design and the most economical budget for an imaginary operator in the city of Alcala de Henares. The proposed learning scheme uses existing concepts of different fields, such as the project-based or competitive games methodologies, and applies them to the teaching of telecommunications subjects. Details of the practical application of the methodology and results obtained at Alcala University are discussed in this paper.