Prompting students? interest and engagement in learning environments is crucial to achieve the best results. Academia and educators in general are constantly adapting materials and methodologies in order to maximise the acquisition of contents by their students. In this case-study, a new teaching/learning methodology is presented and evaluated through a final questionnaire survey. This case-study aims to understand students? efficiency and motivation levels regarding a new teaching/learning methodology adopted in the second module of a Computer Systems and Architectures course attended by first-year Computer Sciences undergraduates. The new teaching/learning
methodology relies on a specific programming language - ARMv6 assembly - to improve student's
efficiency levels, and an innovative always-visible in-class mobile test scenario, implemented through
a low-cost computing platform - Raspberry Pi 1 B+ - as a server, mimicking as much as possible a
real-life environment, so that students believe they are working on real hardware, thus enhancing
their motivation levels. The results of the questionnaire survey allowed to infer that the use of a
specific programming language, such as ARMv6 assembly, coupled with a new always-visible in-class
mobile test scenario were in fact efficient in raising the levels of motivation among Computer Sciences
students and, consequently, improved their skills in Computer Architecture.5311-8814-F0ED | Sara Maria da Cruz Maia de Oliveira PaivaN/
