Incorporating IoT and Data Analytics in an Introductory Programming Course

Jupyter Notebooks have been increasingly used in education and data science. They can be easily deployed in the cloud and the technology is compatible with a variety of programming languages. This paper discusses the integration of Jupyter Notebooks in an Introduction to Programming course. The initial programming course in the College of Engineering and Information Systems was taught using Python with labs and assignments performed using the IDLE Integrated Development Environment. A new course was developed using Jupyter Notebooks focusing on introductory programming concepts and data analytics in the Internet of Things. In the new design, each student received an Arduino kit to run experiments for a course project while using Jupyter Notebooks to learn basic programming skills. The data gathered from the Arduino was analyzed with Python’s data analytics modules. The combination of real world application in IoT and the ease of use with Jupyter Notebooks resulted in higher pass rates and student satisfaction.