0 Introduction
The course on principles and applications of embedded systems has become a compulsory and key construction course for undergraduate institutions in electronics, computer science, automation, and other related majors[1]. Learning, understanding, and mastering the knowledge of embedded system principles and applications is an important part of cultivating the professional qualities of students in information-related majors, as well as a necessary step to enhance students’ ability to understand, think, and solve problems.[2].
In October 2019, the Ministry of Education launched the “Double Ten Thousand Plan” for the construction of first-class undergraduate courses in universities, which is the “Gold Course Construction” program[3-4]. Under the background of the “New Engineering” initiative, information professionals need to have good system thinking ability[5] to conduct system planning, write programs, optimize functions, and other tasks from a holistic perspective. The existing principles and applications of embedded systems course involves a lot of professional basic knowledge, but due to the current single teaching methods, insufficient practical training, and other issues, it lacks in cultivating students’ computer system capabilities[6-7], thus, building a gold course for embedded system principles and applications aimed at cultivating computer system capabilities has become a key focus of course reform.
1 Pathway to Gold Course Construction
1.1 Overall Construction Ideas
The overall construction idea for building a gold course for embedded system principles and applications aimed at cultivating computer system capabilities is shown in Figure 1.
1.2 Building a Knowledge System for the Course Aimed at Cultivating Computer System Capabilities—Realizing the High-Level Nature of Gold Courses
The requirement for the high-level nature of the gold course refers to the organic integration of knowledge, abilities, and qualities, cultivating students’ comprehensive ability to solve complex problems and advanced thinking. The course on principles and applications of embedded systems plays a key role in computer-related majors, guiding students to deeply understand the underlying programming of computer systems and comprehend the principles of embedded system operation programs. Students’ mastery of the course content directly affects their learning of subsequent courses and their understanding of the underlying programming processes of computer systems. To build a gold course for embedded system principles and applications that reflects the high-level characteristics of gold courses, it must be reconstructed to focus on cultivating computer system capabilities.
Therefore, the teaching reform of this course should set the goal of having undergraduate students independently design “an embedded system” and reorganize the course content based on this goal, constructing a clear boundary, complete logical structure, and orderly content connection of the course knowledge system. This designed course system will bring students’ levels closer to the requirements of the teaching goals, providing them with comprehensive capability training to cope with complex problems, possess system thinking abilities, and combine learned knowledge with practical applications.
Figure 2 shows the knowledge structure of the embedded system principles and applications course. According to the construction requirements of the “Undergraduate Major Specifications for Computer Science and Technology”, the research group studied the knowledge areas, knowledge units, and knowledge points involved in the embedded system principles and applications course, as well as the relationships with subsequent courses, starting from the progressive, scalable, and engineering requirements of course experiments. It particularly emphasizes connecting the cross-level related knowledge points between embedded systems and other related courses to construct a discipline knowledge system that meets the design needs of computer systems.
The course takes the currently mainstream embedded MCU—ARM chip—as the teaching object. Through learning this course, students will enhance their understanding of the hardware composition and structure of embedded systems, strengthen their abilities in computer hardware applications and development, and ultimately enable students to comprehensively apply computer software and hardware knowledge in solving practical problems in their professional fields. The entire teaching research work aims to achieve the fundamental goal of enhancing students’ system capability cultivation.
1.3 Implementing a Multi-Interactive Hybrid Teaching Model—Realizing the Innovation of Gold Courses
The “innovation” of gold courses is mainly reflected in two aspects: ① The teaching form should reflect advancement and interactivity, rather than simple low-level classroom indoctrination; ② The learning process should be exploratory and personalized, allowing students to continually explore and engage to achieve the integration of knowledge and action, and the combination of learning and thinking. During the teaching process, it is essential to focus on how to effectively improve teaching models and methods through high-quality course resources on online teaching platforms, increasing the innovation and interactivity of teaching forms[8], which is the biggest challenge in building innovative gold courses.
The research group organically integrates various multimedia teaching forms, constructing a hybrid teaching model of “offline classroom + rain classroom” by building offline courses and rain classroom course platforms, fundamentally transforming the teaching mindset, reflecting a shift in three centers: from a teaching-centered approach to an “active experiential learning” center; from a knowledge point-centered approach to a “problem” center; and from a teacher-centered approach to a “teacher-student interaction” center, which includes three phases in specific implementation.
1) The pre-class phase strengthens course construction based on learning situation analysis.
Utilizing the rain classroom platform, on one hand, the main lecturer can use various online rich media technologies and resources to continuously improve the quality and standards of online course content; on the other hand, students can autonomously complete in-class exercises and chapter assignments after online learning, and they can also think and apply what they have learned. Teachers can timely push course materials, pre-class self-assessments, extended course materials, and other preparatory content to students before class, utilizing the platform’s learning behavior records to form individual and overall class learning reports. The learning situation reports are of great reference value for pre-setting teaching objectives and secondary lesson preparation, helping teachers timely optimize the teaching content in live classrooms.
2) The in-class phase adopts a hybrid teaching form that combines offline classrooms and rain classrooms, focusing on interactivity.
The teaching form of live classrooms must have characteristics of high interactivity, full openness, and rich media, capable of provoking students’ thoughts, evaluations, and creativity. The flipped classroom approach should be actively adopted, with the entire teaching activity centered around students’ learning needs, where students are the main participants and decision-makers of the entire teaching activity and outcomes, while teachers act as designers of the teaching activities, organizing, assisting, and guiding students to combine learning and thinking, fully discussing and reflecting on course content, thereby stimulating students’ innovative spirit.
Specifically, students should complete pre-class preparation and related exercises before class, and for problems encountered in the exercises, they should first discuss in groups and bring difficult questions into the hybrid classroom. During the in-class phase, teachers should use various teaching methods such as interaction and participation to guide students to further discuss and understand related issues. In the classroom interaction segment, teachers can utilize various online functions provided by the rain classroom, such as “group discussions”, “brainstorming”, “classroom quizzes”, and “surveys”, to carry out rich and varied teaching forms that inspire students to discuss and think. In addition, teachers can use the immediate intelligent analysis functions of the rain classroom platform, such as “likes”, “votes/surveys”, and “group evaluations”, to achieve real-time statistical analysis of teaching data.
3) The post-class phase provides targeted integrated teaching based on personalized data.
Big data technology can analyze student performance in every teaching segment before, during, and after class, providing classroom data and personalized reports to teachers and students.
(1) Comprehensive big data analysis. By leveraging the learning situation analysis function of teaching support platforms like the rain classroom, teachers can view course conditions and conduct process-oriented, diagnostic teaching evaluations. Based on self-evaluations, evaluations from group members, and teacher evaluations, a learning situation analysis report for individual students and the overall class can be formed, providing targeted data feedback to teachers, making the teaching more purposeful.
(2) Personalized tutoring. Teachers can provide targeted tutoring based on students’ individual learning records on the rain classroom, communicating and engaging with students after class to address their questions and provide personalized guidance. For common issues, teachers can also push relevant content using platforms like the rain classroom, overcoming time, space limitations, and difficulties in learning evaluations. This teaching method makes learning outcomes exploratory and personalized, focusing not only on telling students what is right or wrong but importantly cultivating their exploratory spirit and leveraging their individual characteristics.
1.4 Constructing an Incremental System Capability Cultivation Experiment System—Realizing the Challenge of Gold Courses
The challenge of gold courses requires that the courses possess a certain level of difficulty, requiring students to invest considerable time in thinking and discussion, and also requiring teachers to invest considerable time in guidance and teaching. In addition to the innovations in teaching content and forms mentioned above, it is also necessary to transform new problems and requirements that arise in practical engineering in related professional fields into themes for innovative experiments, designing an experimental system aimed at engineering scale and industrial-grade standards, guiding students to experience and understand the engineering methods of embedded system development through experiments, and prompting students to think about practical problems in production and understand current industry development trends[9].
The research group found through preliminary teaching research and practice that the current experimental design requirements are relatively broad and cannot meet the final requirements for cultivating students’ system capabilities. Therefore, the design content of the experimental system is replanned to construct a multi-objective, incremental system capability cultivation experiment system (as shown in Figure 3), conducting teaching with a holistic, interconnected, and developmental mindset, guiding students to establish the ability to apply and design modern computer systems. The goal is to focus on cultivating students’ abilities in embedded system programming and help them deeply understand the execution process of embedded system programs.
By developing experimental projects of varying difficulty, covering assembly instructions, serial communication and interrupts, timing clocks, embedded operating system μC/OS-Ⅱ experiments, etc., students of different learning levels can be provided with practice opportunities that match their levels. This teaching method, which gradually increases difficulty, reduces student pressure, and alleviates anxiety, can gradually cultivate students’ interest. Through learning related courses such as digital logic, computer organization principles, and operating systems, students can progressively understand the interrelationships between various levels of computer systems, thereby cultivating their understanding of the complete computer system.
1.5 Establishing a Capability-Oriented Process Assessment Mechanism—Realizing the Challenge of Gold Courses
The construction of gold courses should establish dynamic, process-oriented, and diverse assessment standards, focusing on learning outcomes, application effects, and creating a positive academic atmosphere that encourages students to enhance their autonomy and enthusiasm for learning, allowing students to return to a state of diligent study and hard work.
The composition and evaluation methods of the course grades specifically include a 40% weight for the final exam, 15% for classroom tests, 15% for assignment writing, 15% for laboratory reports, and 15% for group discussions, as shown in Figure 4. By designing a capability-oriented integrated assessment mechanism, the teaching effectiveness of the course can be evaluated and improved.
The teaching staff can utilize online teaching behavior data to form a capability-oriented process assessment mechanism. Through online quizzes, discussions, and assignments in the rain classroom, students’ online learning results can be collected, and their utilization of teaching resources can be reviewed. Based on the analysis of the aforementioned data, on one hand, it can effectively grasp the dynamic process of students’ learning, analyze problems encountered during the learning process, which helps teachers optimize teaching content and methods in class and improve teaching quality. On the other hand, the results of online process assessments can be timely fed back to students in the form of comments, scores, or grades, which can also motivate students’ learning enthusiasm. The assessment oriented towards application effects is a dynamic assessment, and its greatest role is to promote students’ subsequent learning applications, rather than becoming a standard for evaluating students, as applying what they have learned is the ultimate goal of education at any level.
1.6 Building a Gold Teacher Teaching Team—Realizing the Challenge of Gold Courses
A single gold course cannot exist independently; it must rely on a core course group or be a component of the core course group. Therefore, the requirements for gold courses involve not only a teaching team but also a “gold teacher” team with strong political quality, high educational vision, and outstanding academic and technical skills.
First, the teaching team for this course should have a reasonable structure in terms of knowledge, age, and educational background. On this basis, team members should actively engage in teaching research work related to embedded system principles and applications, improve teaching methods, and enhance teaching capabilities, aiming for active teaching ideas, proficient educational levels, and creative methods and techniques. On the other hand, they should analyze and grasp the trends in industry and technology development, requiring a more complex interdisciplinary knowledge system and practical experience, as well as more experience and understanding of research engineering practices, manufacturing processes, and engineering technologies.[10-11] The teaching team should also be a research team in embedded systems with strong academic depth and professional expertise, actively engaging in scientific research in the cutting-edge fields of embedded systems, absorbing the latest academic achievements through the implementation of research projects, accelerating the update of the course knowledge system, feeding back research to teaching, and deepening research through teaching.
2 Practical Outcomes
2.1 Application of Teaching Achievements
This course reform has been first applied in the teaching practice of computer science and technology, intelligent science and technology, and other majors at Hefei University of Technology from the 2019 cohort to the present, achieving significant results. Over the past three years, the research group has further advanced and refined the content of this teaching research in aspects such as knowledge system, teaching model, experimental system, evaluation system, and teaching team construction. The research group has published three teaching research papers, undertaken a total of four teaching research projects including the “Anhui Provincial Teaching Team”, hosted 12 scientific research projects including national key research and development projects, national natural science foundation projects, and Anhui provincial key research and development projects, and won the first prize for teaching achievements in Anhui Province once and the second prize twice. Scientific research has promoted teaching, and teaching reform has driven teaching research. The teaching reform research and practice have trained a “gold teacher” team with strong political quality, high educational vision, and outstanding academic and technical skills.
2.2 Talent Cultivation Outcomes
(1) Students’ learning achievements have steadily improved. Through iterative optimization and continuous improvement over multiple academic years, the embedded system principles and applications course has become one of the most popular courses among students in the college, with high attendance and satisfaction rates, and students’ academic performance in embedded system principles and applications has significantly improved. Figure 5 shows the changes in the average scores of students in the computer science and technology major at Hefei University of Technology from the 2018 cohort (before teaching reform) to the 2021 cohort.
(2) Students’ understanding and application abilities of embedded systems have gradually strengthened. Through case analysis, experimental training, and other methods during the gold course construction process, students’ understanding and application abilities of embedded systems have been continuously deepened. In the subsequent course design of “Comprehensive Training for Hardware Engineers”, students must complete software development for an embedded system in conjunction with different design topics. Over the past three years of implementing course design, students have progressed from completing a topic in groups of 4-5 to groups of 3-4, and currently can achieve completing a design topic in pairs, fully validating the benefits of this gold course construction in enhancing students’ computer system design capabilities.
(3) Students’ abilities in computer system development and innovative practice have significantly improved. Through various scientific research practices and innovative training plan projects during the gold course construction process, students’ system development and innovative practice abilities have been enhanced. Over the past three years, students have obtained three national college student innovation training plan projects, 17 Hefei University of Technology college student innovation training plan projects, published seven academic papers, applied for five software copyrights, and six invention patents. Students in their third year and above have participated in over 50 actual scientific research projects under the guidance of their instructors.
3 Conclusion
Through the steady implementation of teaching reforms, the fundamental goal of enhancing students’ computer system capability cultivation has been achieved. In the next steps, we will attempt to introduce more practical cases and engineering projects, enabling students to better understand the engineering-oriented development of computer systems, while also establishing deeper collaborations with industries related to embedded systems, integrating industry needs into gold course construction, inviting industry experts to give lectures or guide student projects, and improving students’ practical abilities. In addition, it is essential to track and analyze the feedback from graduates to further improve and optimize course content and teaching methods.
References:
[1] Sun Qing, Li Huiyong. Teaching Reform Practice of Embedded System Design Training Course Aimed at Cultivating Students’ Engineering Capabilities[J]. Computer Education, 2020(3): 136-140.
[2] Ma Hongbing. Exploration of Experimental Teaching in Operating System Courses for Electronic Information Majors[J]. Computer Education, 2018(11): 145-148.
[3] Wu Yan. Building China’s “Gold Course”[J]. China University Teaching, 2018(12): 4-9.
[4] Li Zhiyi. My Views on “Water Courses” and “Gold Courses”[J]. China University Teaching, 2018, 55(12): 24-29.
[5] Sun Dawei, Zhang Yuqing. An Analysis of the Cultivation Model of Computer System Thinking Ability under the New Engineering Background[J]. Computer Education, 2020(7): 94-97.
[6] Liu Jiayi, Chen Dejun, Chen Kun et al. Research on Teaching Methods of Embedded Operating Systems[J]. Journal of Electrical and Electronic Teaching, 2023(4): 178-181.
[7] Dong Liping. Theoretical Discussion on University Course Construction and Reform: Reflection Based on the Construction of “Gold Courses” in Chinese Universities[J]. University Education Science, 2019(6): 15-22, 120.
[8] Wu Yan. New Engineering: The Future of Higher Engineering Education: Strategic Thinking on the Future of Higher Education[J]. Higher Engineering Education Research, 2018(6): 1-3.
[9] Lin Jian. New Engineering Major Construction with Interdisciplinary Integration[J]. Higher Engineering Education Research, 2018(1): 32-45.
[10] Gao Junfeng, Huang Letian. Exploration of Industry-University Integration Practice Teaching System for Embedded System Courses[J]. Higher Engineering Education Research, 2021(3): 39-43.
[11] Zhu Zhengwei, Ma Yidan, Zhou Hongfang, et al. The Interrelationship of Three Core Competencies of Engineering Teachers: Teaching, Research, and Engineering Practice[J]. Higher Engineering Education Research, 2020(2): 61-67.
Funding Project: The Ministry of Education’s Industry-University Cooperation Collaborative Education Project “Gold Course Construction for Embedded System Principles and Applications Aimed at Cultivating Computer System Capabilities” (202102594025).
First Author Profile: Xu Juan, female, associate professor at Hefei University of Technology, research direction in industrial artificial intelligence and embedded systems, [email protected].
Citation Format: Xu Juan, Shi Lei, Bi Xiang, et al. Building Gold Courses for Embedded System Principles and Applications to Cultivate Computer System Capabilities[J]. Computer Education, 2024(11):95-100.
Article header image created by “Zhizhu Qingyan”.
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