Use of Constructivism and Collaborative Teaching in an ILP Processors Course

Author

Moreno, Lorenzo ; González, Carina ; Castilla, Iván ; González, Evelio J. ; Sigut, José

Author_Institution

Dept. of Syst. Eng. & Control & Comput. Archit., Univ. de La Laguna, Tenerife

Volume

50

Issue

2

fYear

2007

fDate

5/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

101

Lastpage

111

Abstract

Simulators are widely used to teach instruction level parallelism (ILP) topics. A simulator called SIMDE, which combines the superscalar and very long instruction word (VLIW) approaches to ILP processors in a single environment, has been developed. SIMDE has been validated and improved using feedback from students during two academic years. Although the simulator is a valuable tool in and of itself, this paper goes one step beyond by using SIMDE with an educational methodology based on constructivism and collaborative learning. This methodology has been applied in a computer architecture course that uses the Moodle platform as a framework for collaboration between students and teachers

Keywords

computer aided instruction; educational courses; groupware; instruction sets; teaching; Moodle platform; SIMDE; collaborative teaching; constructivism; instruction level parallelism processors course; superscalar approach; very long instruction word approach; Collaboration; Collaborative work; Computational modeling; Computer architecture; Computer simulation; Dynamic scheduling; Education; Parallel processing; Processor scheduling; VLIW; Collaborative work; computer architecture; educational technology; instruction level parallelism (ILP); simulation software;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Education, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9359

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TE.2006.886461

Filename

4200840