Evolution and Revolution of Computer Systems Courses with the Open RISC-V ISA

This study aimed at determining the effectiveness of the application of learning objects based on Articulate Storyline 3 on student cognitive in the Basic Computer System course in the Informatics Engineering Education Study Program at the Ganesha University of Education. This type of research was descriptive quantitative with a pre-experimental research design involving 1 experimental class. The populations used in this study were all semester 1 students of the Informatics Engineering Education study program in the Basic Computer Systems course in the odd semester of the 2020-2021 academic year. Random sampling was using simple random sampling technique. The average pretest result was 57.12 and the post-test average is 79.81. The paired pretest-posttest t-test resulted in the Sig. equal to 0.000 which indicates that there is a significant difference in the average pretest and posttest results. The percentage of student responses to the learning model is 64.19. This shows that self-confidence in learning objects based on Articulate Storyline 3 on student cognitive abilities "Very Practical". The results of the N-Gain value showed the proportion of 60%. It can be sais that the application of learning objects based on Articulate Storyline 3 has a significant effect on cognitive abilities of the students, cognitive ability increases quite effective and the category of student response is very positive.

Students often encounter assembly language during the course of their education as part of learning about the low-level operation of computer systems. While there are many assembly languages ranging from simple to complex, x86-64 is widely used in introductory level computer systems courses. Unfortunately, students often have difficulty visualizing the execution of an x86-64 program. Interactions between instructions, relevant registers, and the effect that instructions have on memory are all concepts that students struggle to understand. While students can use GDB or other debuggers to help them step through the execution of a program, there are currently no x86-64 simulators aimed at introductory computing students.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of flipped classrooms (e.g. peer instruction) in computer science courses. Flipped classrooms rely on students having obtained first exposure to concepts through pre-class activities such as viewing videos or reading a textbook. Having engaged with the material before class, class time can be spent on more challenging activities with feedback from the instructor and classmates. These pre-class activities can be a challenge for students, who often do not have the skills necessary to critically engage with the assigned reading/viewing. As a result students often come to class under-prepared despite completing the pre-class activities. This paper presents the author's experience with adding guided practice worksheets to improve student preparedness in two courses: a CS1 course and a lower-division Introduction to Computer Systems course. These pre-class worksheets provided a structured set of learning objectives for students to focus on in their reading as well as exercises to test those objectives. Limited results indicate a high worksheet completion rate and a strong positive correlation between individual completion rates and final course grade. This paper also presents recommendations for those instructors wishing to adopt guided practice in their class.

At the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Information Technology Osijek on the course Digital Electronics students are learning the basics of digital electronics and VHDL with unified embedded engineering learning platform (E2LP). E2LP is designed for teaching embedded computer systems courses and system design courses, and therefore lacks basic digital I/O devices such as 16 switches, RGB LEDs, etc. This paper presents E2LP extension board developed with the aim of adding simple I/O devices to the existing E2LP system. The extension board is successfully tested, and several student examples are given.

Those aspects of computer science dealing with the selection of computer hardware, the selection of computer software, the tradeoffs between in-house development and purchase, the transition to a new system, computer performance evaluation, and computer center management are not covered or are covered very lightly in an undergraduate curriculum. This paper presents the evolution and content of a senior-level course on these subjects taught at Indiana-Purdue at Fort Wayne.

The paper justifies the necessity to introduce the students from the 'Computer Systems and Technologies' degree course to the structuce and way of operation of the interrupt system - one of the important components of the processor. Analysis of the basic funcionality of an example interrupt system is presented, an existing interrupt system is selected as a prototype of the training model and the arguments for its selection are proposed. The paper also describes the implemented model and its features. The work with the model will enable students to comprehend the way of operation of the interrupt system and it will be also used to check and assess their knowledge.

Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans.

Students learn better when they both hear and do. In computer architecture courses “doing” can be difficult in small schools without hardware laboratories hosted by computer engineering, electrical engineering, or similar departments. Software solutions exist. Our success with George Mills' Multimedia Logic (MML) is the focus of this paper. MML provides a graphical computer architecture solution with convenient I/O support and the ability to build and emulate a variety of computer designs. It has proven highly motivational to upper division computer science students designing and constructing emulated computers. Student projects resulted in excellent student understanding of the detailed inner workings of computers. Students also developed better teamwork skills and produced useful training aids for the lower division computer organization class. Designs implemented include 8 bit and 16 bit von Neumann and Harvard architectures, from single cycle to 12 cycle instructions. Issues resolved during the learning process include timing, initialization, instruction set architecture, and I/O and assembler design. We discuss pedagogical issues involved in using MML to implement instructor and student computer designs. MML is compared to using a hardware-based Intel 8085 microprocessor basic systems course.

Higher education should focus on learning outcomes, which means teaching design should be student-centered instead of teacher- or course-centered. Effective feedback and response between teachers and student enhance performance and achievement for learners as well as educators. The classic questionnaires are always not effective and timely enough. According to the requirements of talent engineer training, a learning outcomes-oriented feedback-response pedagogy is applied in computer system course, which is an important core major course and basic engineer training course. Multiple kinds of feedback are scheduled at appropriate times and multiform responses are prompt to do assessment and improvement of learning outcomes. Inspiring changes in our course and from students indicate that the pedagogy is effective and meet the need of engineering talents training.

A lógica de programação é a base para a área da Computação, pois permite desenvolver a habilidade de resolução de problemas e o pensamento computacional. No entanto, devido ao grau de dificuldade e compreensão dos seus conceitos, as disciplinas que envolvem a lógica de programação apresentam um alto índice de reprovação. Neste contexto, esta pesquisa objetiva investigar como os alunos do curso de Sistemas de Informação da Universidade Federal do Pará aprendem a programar. Assim, aplicou-se o método de survey com 80 alunos, a fim de coletar e analisar dados sobre a aprendizagem de programação. O principal resultado obtido foi a identificação da relação entre o conhecimento prévio e o desempenho em disciplinas que envolvam programação e as estratégias de aprendizagem que os alunos utilizam para aprender a programar.

Computer operating system (OS) is one of the most important course of computer science. According to the difficult situation in the teaching of computer operating system course, the article analyses the reasons of main problems in the teaching process, and puts forward a new related teaching method based on association. Firstly, the method regards the computer system as a complete social system, and strengthen the crossing and connection with other courses. Secondly, strengthen the specific association and correspondence between experiments and theoretic. Finally, specific examples are given and explained.

Two studies were conducted to examine the use of grounded embodied pedagogy, construction of Imaginary Worlds (Study 1), and context of instructional materials (Study 2) for developing learners' Computational Thinking (CT) Skills and Concept knowledge during the construction of digital artifacts using Scratch, a block-based programming language. Utilizing a conceptual framework for grounded embodied pedagogy called Instructional Embodiment, learners physically enacted (Direct Embodiment) and mentally simulated (Imagined Embodiment) the actions and events as presented within pre-defined Scripts. Instructional Embodiment utilizes action, perception, and environment to create a dynamic, interactive teaching & learning scenario that builds upon previous research in embodied teaching and learning. The two studies described herein examined the effects of Instructional Embodiment, Imaginary World Construction, and Context on the development of specific Computational Thinking Concepts and Skills. In particular, certain CT Concepts, such as Conditionals, Variables, Thread Synchronization, Collision Detection, & Events, and CT Skills, such as abstraction and pattern recognition, were identified and measured within the learners' individual digital artifacts. Presence and/or frequency of these Concepts and Skills were used to determine the extent of Computational Thinking development. In Study 1, fifty-six sixth- and seventh-grade students participated in a fifteen-session curricular program during the academic school day. This study examined the type of instruction and continuity of Imaginary World Construction on the development of certain CT Skills and Concepts used in a visual novel created in Scratch. Main effects were found for learners who physically embodied the pre-defined instructional materials: embodying the pre-defined Scripts led to the learners using significantly more ‘speech’ Blocks in their projects and more Absolute Positioning Blocks for ‘motion’ than those who did not physically embody the same Scripts. Significant main effects were also found for continuity of Imaginary World Construction: learners who were instructed to continue the premise of the first digital artifact (Instructional Artifact) implemented significantly more computational structures in their second digital artifact (Unique Artifact) than those who were instructed to create a Unique Artifact with a premise of their own design. In Study 2, seventy-eight sixth- and seventh-grade students participated in a seventeen-session curricular program during the academic school day. This study examined the type of instruction and context of instructional materials on the development of CT Skills and Concepts during the construction of a video game using Scratch. Similar to Study 1, findings suggest that physically embodying the actions presented within the pre-defined instructional materials leads to greater implementation of many of these same structures during individual artifact construction. The study also showed that as the pre-defined Scripts become more complex (e.g. single-threaded to multi-threaded), the effect of physical embodiment on the development of CT Skills and complex CT Concept structures becomes less pronounced. Findings from this study also suggest that Context has a significant effect on identifying & implementing the CT Skill pattern recognition: learning CT Concepts from an Unfamiliar Context had a significant positive effect on the implementation of both Broadcast/Receive couplings and Conditional Logic & Operator patterns. In sum, the findings suggest that the type of instruction, the continuity of the Imaginary World being constructed, and the context of the instructional materials all play a significant role in the learners' ability to develop certain Computational Thinking Skills and Concept knowledge. The findings also suggest that a physically embodied approach to teaching abstract concepts that is grounded in an unfamiliar context is the most effective way to integrate a grounded embodied approach to pedagogy within a formal instructional setting.

As computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT) make their way into all levels of K-12 education, valid assessments aligned with new curricula can assist in measuring student learning, easing the way for adoption of new computing courses, and evaluation of pedagogical approaches for teaching computing ideas and concepts. Without attention to rigorous assessment, CT can have little hope of making its way successfully into K-12 school education settings at scale. This BoF session will involve discussion around ongoing work at SRI International (under several NSF-funded projects) on the design and development of formative and summative assessments for the ECS curriculum. Additionally, various forms of assessment (including free response and multiple-choice questions, and computational artifacts), and insights from past research on their use will be discussed. BOF attendees will be able to discuss multiple viewpoints, connect with others who care about assessment of CT, and share resources and ideas.

This paper describes Marquette University's efforts to build an experimental embedded systems laboratory for hands-on projects in an operating systems course. Our prototype laboratory is now serving as the basis for a coherent sequence of class projects threaded throughout courses in hardware systems, operating systems, networking, and embedded systems. We describe the major components of our Embedded XINU laboratory environment, the operating systems course, and related improvements in other core courses of our curriculum.

Operating systems course is very important. It is not only the core of computer professional curriculum, but also the base of designing or developing computer system software and application software. However, the practical teaching of operating systems course is difficult. In this article, we introduce the construction of the practical teaching system on operating systems and design a positive experimental environment according to the teaching content through comparing lots of operating systems practical textbooks from the perspective of teaching practice, at last we provide a MOS system for students, they can analyze, modify and extend the functions of MOS to master operating systems concepts and theory.