An undergraduate embedded software laboratory for the masses

Abstract

In addition to lectures on basic theoretical topics nowadays curricula demand more and more practical experiences from the students. Due to the so-called bologna process in Europe the graduation scheme at the department of computer science at RWTH Aachen University was changed, towards Bachelor and Master degrees. Within this change additional courses were established in order to improve the quality of education.The paper presents a lab course given at RWTH Aachen University already twice. It gives third semester bachelor students a first impression on creating embedded software. The course has to be attended by all undergraduate students. Due to the increasing number of students in computer science this will be up to 250 students, which is one of the biggest challenges of this course. In addition to embedded programming many system software concepts are practically implemented in this lab course. This enables the students to gain crucial knowledge in basic fields of computer science.

CALEE: A computer-assisted learning system for embedded OS laboratory exercises

“…Vanhatupa, Salminen, and J€ arvinen (2010) assigned to students homework that built on exercises carried out in class, such as thermometer programming, Lego robot programming, and acceleration sensor programming. Stollenwerk, Jongdee, and Kowalewski (2009) ;Haetzer, Schley, Khaligh, and Radetzki (2011) asked students to complete a final project, such as a small embedded operating system along with its performance measurement, based on previous experiments or practice. The major difference between our laboratory exercises and the above-mentioned exercises is that we focus on porting and customizing the most popular embedded operating system, i.e., Android OS.…”

“…Barr and Gunawardena (2012); Stollenwerk et al (2009) designed an online forum where students could exchange their experiences, questions, and concerns related to the course with peers as well as lecturers. Djordjalian et al (2011) developed a Google service-based discussion forum for students to discuss their homework assignments.…”

The Use of Video-Gaming Devices as a Motivation for Learning Embedded Systems Programming

“…Even though most courses use development platforms based on typical embedded processors (ARM, MIPS, AVR, x86, etc.) and FPGAs in their labs [14]- [16], this paper describes an approach in use since 2004 at the University of Granada, Spain, and awarded with an Innovative Teaching Honorable Mention in 2008, where portable video game consoles are used as the platform to teach embedded systems programming. Besides being based on embedded processors and custom hardware (video processors, media codecs, etc.)…”