Innovative teaching of IC design and manufacture using the Superchip platform

In this paper we describe how an intelligent chip architecture has allowed a large cohort of undergraduate students to be given effective practical insight into IC design by designing and manufacturing their own ICs. To achieve this, an efficient chip architecture, the “Superchip”, has been developed, which allows multiple student designs to be fabricated on a single IC, and encapsulated in a standard package without excessive cost in terms of time or resources. We demonstrate how the practical process has been tightly coupled with theoretical aspects of the degree course and how transferable skills are incorporated into the design exercise. Furthermore, the students are introduced at an early stage to the key concepts of team working, exposure to real deadlines and collaborative report writing. This paper provides details of the teaching rationale, design exercise overview, design process, chip architecture and test regime

Arduino — Enabling engineering students to obtain academic success in a design-based module

Published Conference ProceedingsA key graduate attribute for engineering students is the design and development of solutions for real-life problems. Enabling students to grasp engineering design principles often proves challenging, especially within the African context. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how the introduction of the Arduino microprocessor into a design-based module for undergraduate students has yielded outstanding results in this regard. Up until the end of 2014, students could choose their own microprocessor platform for designing electronic circuits required for specific applications. However, this led to several challenges, including the unavailability of components and the high costs of the microprocessors. Introducing the Arduino microprocessor as the preferred option in 2015 overcame many of these challenges, while at the same time leading to an improvement in the academic achievement of the registered students. A case study was used in this research along with descriptive statistics of the collected data. This data highlights that more than 90% of the students successfully completed this design-based module, while 70% felt that it really helped them to better understand the theoretical knowledge. This microprocessor has been recommended for future use in additional modules as it yielded positive results in 2015

Make and learn: A CS Principles course based on the Arduino platform

We present preliminary experiences in designing a Computer Science Principles undergraduate course for all majors that is based on physical computing with the Arduino microprocessor platform. The course goal is to introduce students to fundamental computing concepts in the context of developing concrete products. This physical computing approach is different from other existing CS Principles courses. Students use the Arduino platform to design tangible interactive systems that are personally and socially relevant to them, while learning computing concepts and reflecting on their experiences. In a previous publication [1], we reported on assessment results of using the Arduino platform in an Introduction to Digital Design course. We have introduced this platform in an introductory computing course at the University of Hartford in the past year as well as in a Systems Fundamentals Discovery Course at the University of New Hampshire to satisfy the general education requirements in the Environment, Technology, and Society category. Our goal is to align the current curriculum with the CS Principles framework to design a course that engages a broader audience through a creative making and contextualized learning experience

A Study on Student Attitudes in Learning Programming using Physical Computing

Learning to program can be difficult for the students. Students must master language syntax, programming theory, and problem-solving techniques. Efforts have been made to assist students in understanding how to program. This study is intended to examine whether Arduino, as a teaching and learning tool, helps in generating students’ interests towards programming. Arduino is one of the physical computing tools which has an open-source electronics platform based on user-friendly hardware and software for creating different projects and applications. Arduino is easy to be used by beginners, yet flexible enough for advanced users to learn physical computing and programming. This study adopted a quantitative research method to measure the student’s attitude in learning programming using physical computing. The sample of this study is 56 students from the foundation program and undergraduate program. To gauge students’ perception, students’ attitude survey was adapted. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive analysis. Based on the analysis, the study found that the overall mean score was 4.253. The result indicated that student has a positive attitude in learning programming using physical computing

CESEC Chair – Training Embedded System Architects for the Critical Systems Domain

Increasing complexity and interactions across scientific and tech- nological domains in the engineering of critical systems calls for new pedagogical approach. In this paper, we introduce the CESEC teaching chair. This chair aims at supporting new integrative ap- proach for the initial training of engineer and master curriculum to three engineering school in Toulouse: ISAE, INSA Toulouse and INP ENSEEIHT. It is supported by the EADS Corporate Foundation. In this paper, we highlight the rationale for this chair: need for sys- tem architect with strong foundations on technical domains appli- cable to the aerospace industry. We then introduce the ideal profile for this architect and the various pedagogical approaches imple- mented to reach this objective

Trends in the Development of Basic Computer Education at Universities

Basic computer education in universities is experiencing huge problems. On the one hand, the amount of knowledge that a university graduate must have is increasing very quickly. On the other hand, the contingent of students varies greatly in terms of the level of training and motivation, and the level of this differentiation is constantly growing. As a result, the complexity of training and the percentage of dropouts increase. Scientists and educators are looking for a solution to these problems in the following areas: revising the knowledge necessary for obtaining at the university in the direction of the reality of their receipt in the allotted time; the use of new information technologies to simplify the learning process and improve its quality; development of the latest teaching methods that take into account the realities. This paper presents a strategic document in the field of computer education at universities - Computing Circulum 2020, as well as an overview of the areas of development of basic computer education, such as learning using artificial intelligence, virtual laboratories, microprocessor kits and robotics, WEB - systems for distance and blended learning, mobile application development, visual programming, gamification, computer architecture & organization, programming languages, learning technologies. In addition, the author gives his experience and vision of teaching basic computer education at universities

An interactive and pen-based simulator to enhance education and research in computer systems: An experience report

The active uses of simulators to facilitate and/or promote learners’ experience in many applications has significantly reshaped the latest educational technology or training methodologies in the past decades including the training of engineering students to understand the actual working mechanisms of specific engineering principles, or the military officers on tactic planning in a simulated combat environment. In many cases, it was clearly revealed that the appropriate uses of simulators not only avoids the indispensable costs of human lives or money lost in the hostile combat or investment field, but also effectively motivates and/or enhances the learners’ interests in the relevant fields of study, thus fueling significant impacts on their actual performance. However, many conventional simulators often require the users to input a formal specification file such as a script or program to specify about the simulation settings. Besides, even in many Window based simulators, the users may need to explicitly memorize about the meanings of various system variables and their proper settings before running a simulation to observe the imparted changes. All these unnecessary hassles will drastically reduce the interactivity of simulators, and also lower the users’ interests in using them. With the fast developing tablet and ultra-mobile PCs, we have seen ample opportunities of employing sophisticated pen-based computing technologies to improve the interactivity of simulators in order to enhance the learners’ experience to learn, reason or visualize with simulators in more effective ways. Therefore, in a recent pen-based simulator development project awarded by the Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), we proposed to use the Microsoft digital ink library to support fast symbol/character recognition and the XML technologies to flexibly define various models of computer architectures so as to build an innovative and pen-based simulator for mobile computing devices. With pen-based or other inputs, our simulator allows the instructors/students to flexibly add or modify instructions that will generate live animations to facilitate interactive discussion for teaching undergraduate to postgraduate courses. Besides, our simulator has the full potential to support research on computer systems through visualization of new results generated out of new computational models or optimization strategies. A prototype of our simulator was completed and then released to all our Year-1 students for trials in the last month in which we collected some initial and positive feedbacks. A more vigorous evaluation was planned and would be conducted by the end of this spring semester. All in all, there are many interesting directions for further investigation including the integration of relevant course materials in the form of digital resources or pointers to online databases into our simulator, and a careful study of the pedagogical changes brought by our innovative and pen-based simulator.published_or_final_versio

A Low-Cost Manipulator for Space Research and Undergraduate Engineering Education

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/83596/1/AIAA-2010-3394-549.pd