2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Abstract
This study investigates the role of Internet of Things (IoT) project-based learning (PjBL) as a systems-oriented educational environment for fostering systems thinking among high school electronics students. Systems thinking, defined as the ability to recognize the system as a whole, understand interactions and feedback mechanisms, trace information flows, and reason about design trade-offs within interconnected systems, is widely acknowledged as a core competence in engineering design. Despite its importance, systems thinking remains insufficiently assessed in secondary-level engineering education, where instruction often emphasizes component-level knowledge and linear problem-solving approaches.
The study is situated in a one-year high school electronics track involving 38 twelfth-grade students. Over the course of the program, students engage in a sequence of scaffolded design activities intentionally structured to increase system complexity and promote system-level reasoning. These activities include a foundational ESP32 assignment integrating analog and digital inputs and outputs; a conceptual examination focusing on data flow and control logic independent of programming syntax; a team-based proposal addressing a real-world engineering challenge; the development of open-ended IoT prototypes connecting an ESP32 edge device to a Raspberry Pi gateway via MQTT communication, with system logic and visualization implemented using Node-RED and InfluxDB dashboards; and a final project examination accompanied by structured reflection.
The integrated IoT projects constitute multi-layered systems that require students to coordinate hardware components, embedded software, communication protocols, data management, and visualization tools. While such projects reflect authentic engineering practice, they also pose substantial cognitive and system-level challenges for high school learners. Students are required to reason across multiple abstraction levels, manage interdependencies among subsystems, and troubleshoot failures that often span more than one system layer.
A predominantly qualitative research approach, complemented by descriptive quantitative analysis, was employed. Students’ project artifacts were evaluated using a systems thinking rubric designed to capture varying levels of system-level reasoning in open-ended IoT projects. Preliminary analysis revealed variation across the five dimensions, with approximately 75% of students achieving moderate-to-high performance in component identification, compared to only about 20–22% demonstrating high-level performance in integration and trade-off reasoning. In parallel, students’ reports, reflections, and instructor observations were analyzed to identify recurring design challenges, including hardware–software integration difficulties, coordination across system layers, and time-management constraints. The study aims to inform the design of instructional scaffolds and assessment tools that better support systems thinking development in secondary-level engineering education.