The project

Surveys of computer science and engineering instructors have indicated that two of the common reasons they do not adopt research-based instruction strategies are preparation time and lack of materials. This lack of materials to support research-based instruction was evident in Computer Architecture & Organization (AR). We are creating, piloting, revising, and sharing activities inspired by Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL). POGIL is a research-based instruction strategy that comprises self-managed teams, development of process skills, and activities designed based on a theory of instruction called learning cycles.

An example of the learning cycle in an activity on truth tables. The exploration phase asks students to record the number of rows and inputs of truth tables, the concept invention phase asks them to infer the relationship of number of rows to number of inputs, and the application phase asks them to use this concept in a new problem.

The activities

These activities are under active development and in use with up to 120 students per semester.

Download

Download the activities. (if link is broken, let us know and we’ll fix ASAP).

If you are using these materials in a course or are considering using them, we appreciate if you let us know.

Activities on architecture

Bits and numbers
Bytes and memory

Activities on architecture that are specific to MIPS

Memory organization of programs
Stored programs
Procedure calls

Activities on digital design and microarchitecture

Combinational logic
Adders and delay
Adders, shifters, multipliers
Sequential logic
Addressable memory
The Add Instruction
Engineering digital systems

What architectures are covered?

Activities above that have to do with architecture use MIPS. I also have ARM versions of these activities, but I have not uploaded them yet. If you are interested, please contact me.

Other information

These activities are listed at cspogil.org.
To quickly determine whether an activity might fit into your course, take a look at the learning objectives for each activity.
These activities are under active development and in use with 120 students per semester.
To date, these have not been endorsed by the POGIL Project. However, they are the product of the author’s participation in a POGIL Writer’s Retreat and are listed on CS-POGIL

Harris & Harris, Digital Design and Computer Architecture, 2nd Ed, 2012
Patterson & Hennessey, Computer Organization and Design MIPS Edition, 5th Ed, 2014

License

The activities are licensed with the following:

Active Learning Activities for Computer Architecture and Organization by Brandon Myers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by contacting the author.

Publications

Ham, Yeajin and Myers, Brandon. Supporting Guided Inquiry with Cooperative Learning in Computer Organization, SIGCSE 2019 (Paper).
Myers, Brandon. Active Learning Materials for Computer Architecture and Organization, SIGCSE 2018 (Abstract, Poster)

Acknowledgement

Funding for this project was generously provided by an ACM SIGCSE Special Projects Award. Read the project final report.
These activities are based on an instruction strategy called Process-oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL). The activities are not endorsed by the POGIL Project.

More information

Find more Computer Science POGIL activities at CS-POGIL
Learn about POGIL
Direct questions/comments to brandonmyers3@acm.org. Let me know if you are using the materials in your course or need access to auxiliary materials.