May 13, 2019

CSU San Bernardino Students Leverage New Computing Power to Tackle Real-World Challenges

With an upgraded 100-gigabit link to the CENIC network, California State University San Bernardino is taking advantage of its new computing power to rethink how it delivers curriculum, promoting multi-disciplinary innovation teams that address 21st-century challenges.

At CENIC’s 2019 Conference, a panel of university leaders presented examples of technology-enabled, real-world projects that are boosting student success and better preparing graduates for the workforce. “We formed collaborations between faculty, staff, and students to work on projects that solve complex issues on our campus and that advance the university’s goals,” said Samuel Sudhakar, chief information officer and vice president for information technology services at CSUSB.

One of nine CSU campuses selected last year to receive a network upgrade to 100 Gbps, CSUSB’s new connection is 10 times faster than before. Other campuses upgraded were Cal Poly Pomona, CSU Fullerton, CSU Long Beach, CSU Northridge, Sacramento State, San Diego State, San Francisco State, and San José State.

Solving Campus Parking Challenges

CSUSB’s Bright Minds program is a one-year experiential internship for honors-level undergraduate students. Students across a range of subjects work with faculty and staff to leverage emerging technologies to conduct practical research that advances the university’s strategic plan.

A “smart parking” project aims to alleviate congestion on campus by developing an app that tracks traffic flow and disseminates real-time parking information. Many of CSUSB’s students are commuters, living at home with their parents and traveling to campus for classes. At the busiest time of day, there are about 5,000 students enrolled in classes and parking spaces for 8,000 cars situated in various locations around campus. But open spaces sprinkled throughout can be hard to find. Students sometimes roam campus for half an hour looking for a parking spot.

The project involves students studying computer science, communication studies, art, and business. Teams gather and analyze information about traffic and parking and tackle the problem from multiple perspectives. “While programming and system design skills are important, we also need students to work on survey technology, collecting ground truth, promoting the project, and gathering feedback,” Sudhakar said.

Using computer vision technology, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and machine learning, students and faculty are building a system with the ability to detect, count, classify, and ultimately predict the amount and location of vehicles and cyclists. “We will use the computational power of the Pacific Research Platform, as well as the high-speed connection, to process the sensor data, so that we can not only monitor parking spaces but also suggest parking locations for our students,” said Yunfei Hou, assistant professor for the School of Computer Science and Engineering at CSUSB.

Faculty, students, and staff are involved so that the project is sustainable in the long run. Kurt Collins, professor of design in the Department of Art and R&D faculty fellow with Academic Technologies and Innovation, provides creative design and user-experience expertise. Hou provides technical guidance to computer science students. Staff members in information technology services and other divisions across campus provide support.

Students Create Immersive Curriculum

CSUSB’s Immersive Technologies program offers students the opportunity to create cutting-edge curriculum for a variety of classes at the university, from archeology to nursing. Working with faculty, students design augmented and virtual reality programs that offer a hands-on way to learn a topic by being able to experience it without physically being there. “Projects don’t just involve students from computer science, but also from music for sound design, from art for the design of the environment, and from communications for storytelling,” said Mihaela Popescu, a professor for the Department of Communications Studies and faculty director of Academic Technologies and Innovations.

For archaeology classes, students designed a VR simulation that teaches students how to properly navigate an archeological transect, find artifacts, and make inferences about their context of use. For nursing classes, students created a simulation that shows how to conduct a patient discharge interview. For the university’s annual sports disability festival, the largest of its kind in Southern California, students will create VR simulations that enable people to experience extraordinary accomplishments made by people with disabilities.

CSUSB students created "Ambrosia" for the university's archaeology class

While the technology is popular with students and promotes active learning, faculty are able to study the impact of immersive technologies on instruction. “We have a course in which we've replaced one lesson with this simulation and we are running a quasi-experiment with some randomly selected students taking the lesson in VR, and the others taking the lesson in the traditional format,” Popescu said. “We are collecting data and we are hoping to see a difference in learning outcomes.”

Engaging Students to Improve Graduation Rates

New technology-enabled programs at CSUSB improve student engagement, eliminate achievement gaps, and increase graduation rates in support of the California State University’s Graduation Initiative 2025. More than 80% of students who graduate from CSUSB are the first in their families to graduate from college.

In addition to creating new programs, high-speed Internet connectivity has helped CSUSB expand faculty-led research, obtain research grants (many of which require a 100-gigabit connection), create Science DMZs, and move more applications to the cloud. Today, networks are critical to the flow of knowledge and a robust CENIC network means more Californians can access that knowledge and the whole connected world.

Watch Sudhakar, Collins, and Hou’s panel discussion, "Smart Campus, Smarter Learning: Improving Campus Parking Congestion," from CENIC's 2019 Conference.

Related Content:

• How Immersive Technology Is Changing the Way CSU Students Learn
• UC San Diego Opens First Virtual Reality Lab for Undergrads
• EdTech: Four Ways Colleges Are Embracing Virtual Reality
• USC: Game Innovation Lab Nabs $300,000 NHE Grant to Expand "Walden"

Related blog posts

Network Traffic Analysis Shows Changing Activity Patterns During COVID-19 Pandemic

Even as campuses, schools, libraries, and cultural institutions have closed amid stay-at-home orders, CENIC’s networks have remained a vital part of the Internet ecosystem for online learning and community engagement, remote access to research data and specialized computing facilities, academic medicine and clinical care, and work-from-home operations.

Understanding Network Impacts of Increased Online Learning

While COVID-19 is creating unprecedented uncertainty, Research and Education Networks such as CENIC's CalREN will play an important role in supporting our educational institutions as they increasingly move to online learning. CENIC has prepared this information as a resource for members who have moved to, or are contemplating moving to, online instruction.