Design of Paper CPU Project to Improve Student Understanding of CPU Working Principle
With the continued surge in the popularity of CS classes,an unprecedented number of non-major undergraduate students enroll in an introductory computer science course.It is a little difficult for freshmen to totally understand CPU working principle in one or two lessons.In the literature,many CS0 curriculum teaching methods have been proposed and studied.One challenge in helping students understand the structure of CPU and how it performs the instructions of a program,is partially the lack of tools for students to be engaged in the CPU working process.In this article,we present a paper CPU project that has been used in an introductory computer science course in our university.A paper CPU represents a virtual CPU made by paper or other materials.During this activity,students presented the CPU working process by executing a program.We describe the goal,the principle,the design for our project,the class activity organization,the outcome (handcraft works of paper CPUs),the presentation,and the feedback from the students.We also discuss how the students were influenced during developing paper CPUs,what were the highest ranked difficulties,etc.Students used four kinds of materials to make their paper CPUs and they really enjoyed this activity.Students got a deep understanding for CPU working principle through such a CPU-making process and presentation.Finally,we present our quantitative findings to reflect the effectiveness of our project,as well as the statistics about the students achievements on this project.
Introductory Computer Science Courses CS0 CPU Working Principle
Juan Chen Li Shen
College of Computer, National University of Defense Technology Changsha, Hunan, China
国际会议
2018中国图灵大会(ACM Turing Celebration conference-China 2018)
上海
英文
96-102
2018-05-19（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）