Electrical and Computer Division Technical Session 11 focused on papers aimed at increasing retention in intro electrical and computer engineering courses. One of those papers was titled, “Transformation of an Introductory Computer Engineering Course Utilizing Microprocessors and a Focus on Hardware Limitations.”
The paper goes through the experience and preliminary results from when Mr. Charles Carlson, and Dr. Dwight Day took on student retention in computer engineering. Focusing on the introductory embedded systems course, they changed the focus from hardware design to microprocessor designs. This, they believed would help retention, but might lead to a loss of knowledge regarding hardware limitations. Using the Analog Discovery 2‘s Logic Analyzer they were able to make sure student’s gained an understanding of the timing limitations of their designs.
The success of the transformation was measured via surveys about the student’s confidence in the core topics of the class, and comparing to a control group from before the transformation. The paper presents preliminary survey results from the transformation, lasting 3 semesters.
Head to the ASEE webpage to view the paper in it’s entirety.
