0 Introduction
The course on Embedded Systems Principles and Applications has become a mandatory and key construction course for majors in electronics, computer science, automation, and other fields at undergraduate institutions[1]. Learning, understanding, and mastering the knowledge of embedded systems principles and applications is an important part of cultivating the professional quality of students in information-related majors and is also a necessary step to enhance students’ understanding, thinking, and problem-solving abilities[2].
In October 2019, the Ministry of Education launched the “Double Ten Thousand Plan” for the construction of first-class undergraduate courses in universities, namely the “Golden Course Construction” plan[3-4]. Under the background of the “New Engineering” initiative, talents in information-related fields need to possess good system thinking[5] skills to conduct system planning, program writing, and function optimization from a holistic perspective. The existing course on Embedded Systems Principles and Applications involves a lot of foundational knowledge, but due to the current issues of single teaching methods and insufficient practical training, it has shortcomings in cultivating students’ computer system capabilities[6-7]. Therefore, the construction of high-quality courses in embedded systems principles and applications aimed at cultivating computer system capabilities has become a key focus of curriculum reform.
1 Pathway for High-Quality Course Construction
1.1 Overall Construction Idea
The overall construction idea for building high-quality courses in Embedded Systems Principles and Applications aimed at cultivating computer system capabilities is shown in Figure 1.
1.2 Constructing a Knowledge System for Embedded Systems Principles and Applications Aimed at Cultivating Computer System Capabilities—Achieving High-Order Characteristics of High-Quality Courses
The requirement for high-order characteristics of high-quality courses refers to the organic integration of knowledge, abilities, and qualities, cultivating students’ comprehensive ability to solve complex problems and advanced thinking. The course on Embedded Systems Principles and Applications plays a key role in related computer majors, guiding students to deeply understand the underlying programming of computer systems and comprehend the principles of embedded system operation programs. Students’ mastery of course content directly affects their learning of subsequent courses and their understanding of the underlying programming processes of computer systems. To create a high-quality course in Embedded Systems Principles and Applications that reflects high-order characteristics, it is essential to rebuild the knowledge system of embedded systems and applications courses with a 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 knowledge system. This designed course system will bring students’ levels closer to the requirements of teaching goals, providing them with comprehensive capability training, enabling them to address complex problems, possess system thinking abilities, and integrate learned knowledge with practical applications.
Figure 2 illustrates the knowledge structure of the Embedded Systems Principles and Applications course. According to the construction requirements of the “Undergraduate Major Specification for Computer Science and Technology,” the research group studies the knowledge areas, knowledge units, knowledge points involved in the Embedded Systems Principles and Applications course, as well as the relationships with subsequent courses, starting from the progressive, scalable, and engineering requirements of course experiments. It emphasizes connecting 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 focuses on the mainstream embedded MCU technology—ARM chips. Through studying this course, students will enhance their understanding of the hardware composition and structure of embedded systems, strengthen their capabilities in computer hardware applications and development, ultimately enabling students to comprehensively apply their knowledge of both software and hardware in solving practical problems in their field. 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—Achieving Innovation in High-Quality Courses
The “innovation” of high-quality courses is mainly reflected in two aspects: ① The teaching form must reflect advancement and interactivity, not simply low-level classroom indoctrination; ② The learning process must be exploratory and personalized, allowing students to continuously explore and engage to achieve the integration of knowledge and action, as well as 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, enhancing the innovation and interactivity of teaching forms[8], which is the greatest difficulty in constructing innovative high-quality courses.
The research group integrates various multimedia teaching forms organically, building offline courses and rain classroom course platforms, constructing a hybrid teaching model of “offline classroom + rain classroom,” fundamentally transforming teaching thinking methods, reflecting the transition of three centers: from teacher-centered indoctrination teaching to “active experiential learning” centered; from knowledge point-centered to “problem” centered; and from teacher lecture-centered to “teacher-student interaction” centered, including three phases in specific implementation.
1) The pre-class phase strengthens course construction based on learning situation analysis.
Leveraging the rain classroom platform, on one hand, the main lecturer can utilize various online rich media technologies and resources to continuously improve the quality and standards of online course content; on the other hand, students can independently complete in-class exercises and chapter assignments after online learning, also achieving thoughtful learning and practical application. Teachers can timely push course materials, pre-class self-assessment, and supplementary course materials to students before class, utilizing the platform’s learning behavior records to form individual and class learning reports. The learning situation report has significant reference value for pre-setting teaching goals and secondary lesson preparation, helping teachers optimize the teaching content in live classrooms in a timely manner.
2) The in-class phase adopts a hybrid teaching format combining interactive offline classrooms with rain classrooms.
The teaching form in live classrooms must possess high interactivity, full openness, and rich media characteristics, capable of provoking students’ thinking, evaluation, and creativity. The flipped classroom format should be actively adopted, and the entire teaching activity should revolve around students’ learning needs, with students as the main participants and decision-makers of the teaching activities and outcomes, while teachers act as designers of teaching activities, organizing, assisting, and guiding students in integrating learning and thinking, fully discussing and reflecting on course content, thereby stimulating students’ innovative spirit.
Specifically, students complete pre-class preparation and relevant exercises before class, and any problems encountered during the exercises are first discussed in groups, bringing difficult questions into the hybrid classroom, where teachers employ various teaching methods such as interaction and participation to guide students in further discussions and understanding of related problems. In the classroom interaction phase, teachers can utilize various online functions provided by the rain classroom, such as “group discussion,” “brainstorming,” “classroom quick response,” and “questionnaire survey,” to conduct rich and varied teaching formats that inspire students’ discussions and thoughts. Additionally, teachers can use the real-time data analysis functions of the rain classroom platform, such as “likes,” “voting/questionnaires,” and “group evaluations,” to achieve real-time statistical analysis of teaching data.
3) The post-class phase provides targeted integrated teaching through personalized data.
Big data technology can analyze students’ performance at each teaching stage before, during, and after class, providing classroom data and personalized reports to teachers and students.
(1) Comprehensive big data analysis. Leveraging the learning situation analysis function of teaching assistant platforms like rain classroom, teachers can view course situations and conduct process-oriented, diagnostic teaching evaluations. Based on self-evaluations, peer evaluations, and teacher evaluations, individual and class overall learning situation analysis reports are formed, providing targeted data feedback for teachers, making teaching more precise.
(2) Personalized guidance. Teachers can provide targeted guidance based on individual learning records of students on the rain classroom platform, facilitating communication and answering students’ questions while providing personalized guidance. For common issues, teachers can also utilize platforms like rain classroom to push relevant content, overcoming time, space limitations, and learning evaluation difficulties. This teaching method makes learning outcomes exploratory and personalized, not merely telling students what is right or wrong, but more importantly, cultivating their exploratory spirit and leveraging their individual characteristics.
1.4 Progressive Experimental System for System Capability Cultivation—Achieving the Challenge of High-Quality Courses
The challenge of high-quality courses requires that the course possess a certain level of difficulty, necessitating students to invest considerable time in thinking and discussion, and requiring teachers to invest more time in guidance and teaching. In addition to the innovations in teaching content and methods mentioned above, new problems and requirements emerging in the professional field in actual engineering must be transformed into themes for innovative experiments, designing an experimental system aimed at engineering scale and industrial-grade standards, guiding students to experience and understand engineering methods in embedded system development through experiments, prompting them to think about practical problems in production and understand current industry development trends[9].
The research group has found through preliminary teaching research and practice that the existing experimental design requirements are relatively broad and cannot meet the final requirements for cultivating students’ system capabilities. Therefore, it has re-planned the design content of the experimental system, constructing a multi-objective, progressive system capability cultivation experimental system (as shown in Figure 3), teaching with a holistic, interrelated, and developmental mindset, guiding students to establish their application and design capabilities for 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, timer clocks, embedded operating system μC/OS-Ⅱ experiments, etc., practical opportunities matching different learning levels can be provided for students. This teaching method gradually increases difficulty, alleviates student pressure, and mitigates anxiety, progressively cultivating students’ interest. Through studying related computer hardware series 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 a complete computer system.
1.5 Establishing a Process-Oriented Evaluation Mechanism Focused on Capability—Achieving the Challenge of High-Quality Courses
The construction of high-quality courses should establish dynamic, process-oriented, and diverse assessment standards, centered around learning outcomes, application effects, and a comprehensive process evaluation that fosters a positive academic atmosphere, guiding students to enhance their autonomy and enthusiasm for learning, returning to a state of diligent research and hard work.
The composition and assessment methods of this course’s grades specifically include a final exam accounting for 40%, classroom tests accounting for 15%, written assignments accounting for 15%, experimental reports accounting for 15%, and group discussions accounting for 15%, as shown in Figure 4. By designing a capability-oriented integrated evaluation mechanism, the teaching effectiveness of the course can be assessed and enhanced.
The teaching staff can utilize online teaching behavior data to form a capability-oriented process evaluation mechanism. Through online tests, discussions, and assignments on the rain classroom platform, students’ online learning results can be collected, and their utilization of teaching resources can be reviewed. Based on the analysis of the above data, teachers can effectively grasp the dynamic learning process of students, analyze the problems encountered during learning, and optimize teaching content and methods in the classroom, thereby improving teaching quality. On the other hand, the results of online process evaluation can be timely feedback to students in the form of comments, scores, or grades, which can also stimulate students’ enthusiasm for learning. Application effect-oriented assessments are dynamic evaluations, with the greatest effect being to promote students’ subsequent learning applications, rather than serving as standards for evaluating students, as the ultimate goal of education at any level is to apply what is learned.
1.6 Building a High-Quality Teaching Team—Achieving the Challenge of High-Quality Courses
A single high-quality course cannot exist independently; it must rely on a core course group or be a component of a core course group. Therefore, high-quality courses require not only a teaching team but also a team of “golden teachers” with strong political qualities, high educational standing, and superb academic and technical skills.
Firstly, the teaching team for this course should possess a reasonable structure of knowledge, age, and academic background. On this basis, team members should actively engage in teaching research on embedded systems principles and applications, improving teaching methods and enhancing teaching capabilities, aiming for active teaching ideas, proficient education levels, and creative methods and techniques. On the other hand, they need to analyze and grasp trends in industry and technology development, requiring a more complex interdisciplinary knowledge system and practical application 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 with strong academic depth and professional expertise in embedded systems, actively engaging in scientific research in the frontier fields of embedded systems, absorbing the latest academic achievements through the implementation of research projects, accelerating the update of the course knowledge system, and reinforcing teaching through research while deepening research through teaching.
2 Practical Outcomes
2.1 Application of Teaching Achievements
This course reform has first been 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. Further advancements and improvements have been made in all aspects, including knowledge systems, teaching models, experimental systems, evaluation systems, and teaching team construction. Over the past three years, the research group has published three teaching research papers focusing on the construction of high-quality courses in Embedded Systems Principles and Applications, undertaken a total of four teaching research projects, including the “Anhui Provincial Teaching Team,” and led 12 research projects such as the National Key Research and Development Program, National Natural Science Foundation projects, and Anhui Provincial Key Research and Development Program projects, winning the first prize for teaching achievements in Anhui Province once and the second prize twice. Research has promoted teaching, and teaching reform has driven research. The research and practice of teaching reform have trained a team of “golden teachers” with strong political qualities, high educational standing, and superb academic and technical skills.
2.2 Talent Cultivation Outcomes
(1) Students’ learning achievements have steadily improved. After multiple iterations and continuous improvements over several teaching years, the Embedded Systems 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’ learning achievements in embedded systems principles and applications have significantly improved. Figure 5 shows the changes in average scores for 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 regarding embedded systems have gradually strengthened. During the construction of high-quality courses, various methods such as case analysis and experimental training have been employed to continuously deepen students’ understanding and application abilities regarding embedded systems. In subsequent course designs titled “Comprehensive Training for Hardware Engineers,” students must complete software development work for an embedded system based on different design topics. Over the past three years of implementing course design, the group size for students completing a topic has gradually decreased from 4-5 members to 3-4 members and currently to two members per design topic, fully verifying the positive enhancement of students’ computer system design capabilities through the construction of high-quality courses.
(3) Students’ capabilities in computer system development and innovative practices have significantly improved. Throughout the construction of high-quality courses, various practical activities such as scientific research practices and innovative training projects have been used to enhance students’ system development and innovative practice abilities. Over the past three years, students have obtained three National College Student Innovation Training Program projects, 17 Hefei University of Technology College Student Innovation Training Program projects, published seven academic papers, applied for five software copyrights, and six invention patents. Students in their third year and above have participated in more than 50 actual research projects under the guidance of their instructors.
3 Conclusion
Through the steady implementation of teaching reforms, the fundamental goals for enhancing students’ computer system capability cultivation have been achieved. In the next steps, efforts will be made to introduce more practical cases and engineering projects to help students better understand the engineering-based development of computer systems, while also engaging in deeper cooperation with industries related to embedded systems, incorporating industry needs into high-quality course construction, inviting industry experts to give lectures or guide students’ projects, and enhancing students’ practical abilities. Additionally, it is essential to track and analyze the feedback from graduates to further improve and optimize course content and teaching methods.
References:
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[6] Liu Jiayi, Chen Dejun, Chen Kun, et al. Research on Teaching Methods for Embedded Operating Systems[J]. Journal of Electrical and Electronic Teaching, 2023(4): 178-181.
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[8] Wu Yan. New Engineering: The Future of Higher Engineering Education: Strategic Reflections on the Future of Higher Education[J]. Higher Engineering Education Research, 2018(6): 1-3.
[9] Lin Jian. Construction of New Engineering Majors with Multidisciplinary Integration[J]. Higher Engineering Education Research, 2018(1): 32-45.
[10] Gao Junfeng, Huang Letian. Exploration of Practice Teaching System for Embedded System Courses Based on Industry-Academia Integration[J]. Higher Engineering Education Research, 2021(3): 39-43.
[11] Zhu Zhengwei, Ma Yidan, Zhou Hongfang, et al. The Interrelationship among Teaching, Research, and Engineering Practice: The Three Core Abilities of Engineering Teachers[J]. Higher Engineering Education Research, 2020(2): 61-67.
Fund Project: Ministry of Education Industry-Academia Cooperation Collaborative Education Project “Construction of High-Quality Course in Embedded Systems Principles and Applications Aimed at Cultivating Computer System Capabilities” (202102594025).
First Author Introduction: 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. Construction of High-Quality Course in Embedded Systems Principles and Applications Aimed at Cultivating Computer System Capabilities[J]. Computer Education, 2024(11):95-100.
Article header image created by “Zhizhu Qingyan”.
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