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