Distributed expertise for teaching computer organization &amp; architecture

Cassel, Lillian N.; Holliday, Mark A.; Kumar, Deepak; Impagliazzo, John; Bolding, Kevin; Pearson, Murray; Davies, Jim; Wolffe, Greg; Yurcik, William

doi:10.1145/571969.571973

Cited by 6 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…2003). The importance of learning computer architecture and the difficulties encountered by teachers and students have been well documented (IEEE Micro, 2000;Cassel et al, 2000). Kumar and Cassel (2002) found that many faculty members who teach this subject are teaching outside their areas of specialization and are not entirely comfortable with the task.…”

Section: The Complexity Of the Computer Architecture Topicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcing and Enhancing Understanding of Students in Learning Computer Architecture

Yehezkel¹,

Leibovitch²,

Левин³

2011

IISIT

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The main goal of the research presented in the paper is to study the Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Engineering (CE) curriculum in order to improve its coverage, with the goal of better preparing graduates to pursue a wider range of professional careers. The research deals with the differences in studying subjects related to computer architecture by two groups of students having different prior knowledge: EE students and CE students. This research establishes the implications of hands-on studies and considers the gap in knowledge, and whether these studies reduce the gaps. This research was conducted for the same "Microprocessors practicum" course. The first group (CE students) acquired a large body of knowledge in computer architecture, while the second group (EE students) acquired knowledge mainly in "Introduction to programming" prior to the practicum course, and this fact was reflected in a pretest conducted for the two groups. The official test that was taken at the end of the semester, which examined the knowledge that was acquired during the course's lectures, revealed no difference between the two groups. However, a posttest, specifically arranged for the purpose of this study, strongly indicated that the Computer Engineering students have an advantage over the Electrical Engineering students. Regarding the objective that the lab should provide students with an understanding of computing processes, it seems that lack of prior knowledge hinders it. The lab is meaningful provided that the students are exposed to prior studies, in which case, the lab serves to reinforce the subject matter. At the university in which the research took place, suitable changes in the curriculum have already been made.

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Section: The Complexity Of the Computer Architecture Topicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reinforcing and Enhancing Understanding of Students in Learning Computer Architecture

Yehezkel¹,

Leibovitch²,

Левин³

2011

IISIT

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“…Two common problems were identified during a recent survey [3] of instructors of computer organization and architecture courses: (1) instructors are not aware that capable CPU simulators exist and (2) if aware of CPU simulators in general, instructors are not aware of particular simulators that meet their pedagogical needs. The goal of this paper is to provide an easy-to-use survey of free and Internet-accessible computer system simulators as a resource for all instructors of computer organization and computer architecture courses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching computer organization/architecture with limited resources using simulators

et al. 2002

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As the complexity and variety of computer system hardware increases, its suitability as a pedagogical tool in computer organization/architecture courses diminishes. As a consequence, many instructors are turning to simulators as teaching aids, often using valuable teaching/research time to construct them. Many of these simulators have been made freely available on the Internet, providing a useful and time-saving resource for other instructors. However, finding the right simulator for a particular course or topic can itself be a time-consuming process. The goal of this paper is to provide an easy-to-use survey of free and Internet-accessible computer system simulators as a resource for all instructors of computer organization and computer architecture courses.

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“…There are other computer system simulators, as documented in [2,4], but we believe our simulator is unique in that it is focused on beginning students while providing flexibility and extensibility to more advanced topics. Our simulation tool is based on the Little Man Computer (LMC) Model first introduced by Stuart Madnick of MIT in 1965 and further developed by Irv Englander of Bentley College in a popular computer organization textbook [1].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%