Maker Faire 2024 of the Department of Statistics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science, was successfully held on 02nd of October 2024, with the presence of the honourable chief guests Vice Chancellor Prof. Terrence Madhujith and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof. Ranjith Pallegama.
Maker Faire is a student-organised event patronised by the CSC2052 Computer Architecture course instructors, Mr. Isuru Madugalla and Dr. Erunika Dayaratna. The course was introduced with the latest curriculum revision, effective 2023. This exhibition is a continuation of an initiative by Mr. Prabhath Gunathilake, who was the instructor of CS 206, Computer device interfacing, which was absorbed into CSC2052 during the latest curriculum revision broadening the microcontroller-based learning towards embedded computing and edge-AI applications.
Students showcased their learning outcomes of Microcontroller (Arduino, Raspberry pi, etc.) based implementations exploring the Internet of Everything (IoE) concepts. This module was expected to promote students’ learning skills, such as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and communication. At the same time, Interpersonal and social skills were also encouraged by boosting their leadership, flexibility, initiative, productivity, problem-solving, digital literacy, ethics, etc. This can be considered a comprehensive assessment mode when it comes to self-directed, self-motivated learning and showcasing their literacy in multiple modes like building and presenting to an audience.
This year, 18 student groups from the Computer Science 2nd year batch demonstrated their exhibits, ranging from medical drones, robotic arms, and CPR and AED training kits to smart greenhouses and smart blind sticks. They were based on various applications like medicine, agriculture, engineering, etc. The main goal of this course is to use their 1000 and 2000 Levels learnings in applied and engineering use cases. This is expected to make them realise the possible smart IoE implementations with commercially available microcontrollers, sensors and communication modules. This will enhance their perspective on possible tangible outcomes of science rather than focusing only on the theoretical sciences. Continuing this learning, they are expected to utilise the knowledge and insights gained by this activity during the 3000 Level software development projects and in the final year research. The department believes this will encourage students to find practical smart solutions for real scenarios and problems.
