Awakening curiosity — Hardware education for computer science students

This paper describes a new systematic approach and methodology for teaching hardware based courses to computer science (CS) students. It is a combination of various approaches with a profound goal to provoke deeper comprehension in various topics in microprocessors and microcontrollers details. The computer student programming skills and knowledge (generally high level programming languages and algorithms) is used to program and control processes with microcon trollers. Th e methodolog y evolutes around three steps: using visual simulators, incrementally weighted exercises, from easiest to hardest, including supplemental points, and finally working on real hardware controllers. The proposed teaching approaches were developed for the course “Microprocessors and Microcontrollers”, but can be applied to every hardware based course on computer science students.