Using Professional Literature to Augment Student Motivation
John A. Rupf[1]
Abstract
This paper reports my very positive experiences in using articles from the current professional literature as supplemental reading assignments in one of my courses. The articles were carefully selected to present state-of-the-art technological concepts relevant to the course at a level that the students could readily comprehend and appreciate. Short quizzes were given over the articles to “motivate” the students to read and study them. Surveys of student opinions regarding their experiences with this technique indicate that this activity was beneficial in increasing student involvement and motivation.
Introduction
The experiences reported here were obtained while teaching a required computer architecture course in our master’s degree program in computer science (MSCS). Most of the students were working professionals who were pursuing their advanced education on a part-time basis. The majority of the students held technical degrees in fields other than computer science. The course met in the evening and the text for the course was Computer Organization and Design by Hennessy and Patterson (1). The course was lecture based, with homework and exams. The only “lab” associated with the course required writing a few assembly language programs using the SPIM simulator (2).
Although our MSCS students are mature, very capable, and academically astute, computer architecture is rarely their primary interest and its relevance in the job market is not evident to many them. A method was needed to add some “spice” to the course. Certainly there are a great number of extremely interesting things occurring in this field. Perhaps if the students could be made more aware of some of these things and their relation to the course, it would spark their interest.
Term Paper Approach
One tried and true method to engage the students is to require them to write a term paper. Ideally the students will explore a topic of their own choosing in some depth. For my purposes the disadvantage of this approach was two-fold. First, students generally start working on their term papers late in the semester, and I was looking for a way to stimulate their interest early in the term -- and to sustain it throughout the term. Second, I have yet to develop a simple, reliable method to determine if the students are doing their own work. (The Internet has certainly compounded this problem.)
However, a significant advantage of the term paper approach is that it requires very little class time to administer. The course syllabus was already crowded and a technique that would not utilize much precious lecture time was required. Therefore I needed a technique that meet the following constraints:
- Starts early in the term.
- Uses a minimal amount of in-class time.
- Has an evaluation method that forces the students to work individually.
Journal Articles Approach
Since the new developments in computer architecture are reported in the professional literature, that seemed like an ideal source of “motivational” material. The major challenge would be to find articles that would effectively supplement the course. To assist the article selection effort five criteria were developed to guide the article selection process. The selected articles should:
- Demonstrate that what is learned in class applies to the real world.
- Introduce important topics not addressed in class.
- Acquaint students with the state of the art in selected areas.
- Cover some lecture topics in more depth.
- Demonstrate that previously unknown or obscure/intimidating areas of the professional literature are now understandable and accessible.
Few articles can meet all these criteria. Consequently, the approach taken was to select all the articles during a term from a primary topic area. This provides some relationship between the articles so that they do not appear to have been selected at random. Examples of topic focus areas included nanotechnology (fall 2001) and embedded systems (fall 2002).
Implementation
Copies of the selected articles were distributed to the students -- about five or six times a term. This was about the right number of assignments to space around exams, homework, and labs. When I first began assigning articles, the students were required to write a one or two page summary of each assignment. Not surprisingly, most reviews read like highlighted portions of the articles and it was difficult to determine the students’ level of understanding. Furthermore, authentication was a problem. Several students complained that their peers were having their reviews written for them by friends and spouses. For this and other reasons, the students did not like these assignments. From the instructor’s perspective, the reviews required a considerable effort to evaluate.
Recently I have been giving short quizzes over each reading assignment. The quiz questions are designed to test the students’ understanding of the important points in the article, without requiring much conceptual integration. (This activity is supposed to be “fun.”) The quizzes are composed of ten questions of the true/false, multiple-choice, fill in the blank variety, with an occasional short discussion question. In my experience such quizzes have proven to be surprisingly challenging to construct, but they have the major advantages of being objective and easy to evaluate. Typically the scores on the quizzes average about 8 out of 10. The quizzes require about 10 minutes to administer and about 5 minutes to review and discuss, which is done immediately after collecting the quizzes. This provides immediate feedback and seems to create a competitive environment among the students that motivates them to carefully read the articles.
Occasionally, the article selections can be obtained primarily from a single source, such as special issues. For example, for the fall 2001 term most of the articles were taken from the September 2001 Scientific American special issue on nanotechnology. The articles utilized that term are listed as references 3-12. The articles were assigned in five groups consisting of references (3,4,5),(6,7),(8,9),(10), and (11,12). A quiz was given over each set of articles.
The articles selected for reading in during the fall 2002 term were in the area of embedded systems (see references 13-22). The articles were assigned in five groups consisting of references (13),(14,15,16),(17,18,19),(20), and (21-22). Again, a quiz was given over each set of articles. The 10 questions from the quiz over “Crossroads for Mixed-Signal Designs” (20) are listed below.
Example Quiz
1. SoCs contain
a) only digital circuits
b) only analog circuits
c) only RF circuits
d) all of the above
2. The design time (time to market) for highly complex SoCs is currently around
a) 1 ½ to two years
b) one year
c) six months
d) three months
3. EDA tools are essential for designing SoCs. EDA stands for ______.
4. (T or F) Development of appropriate test benches is one of the greatest challenges in creating SoCs.
5. The world of analog circuit design is (more, less) structured than the digital design world.
6. “The migration to deep-submicron technology and smaller gate widths demands full-wave solutions.” Explain.
7. “Pure-play foundries build 12% of all ICs today.” What is a “pure-play foundry?”
8. (T or F) Reusable analog IP is typically provided in hard form and is delivered as a physically laid-out and routed circuit.
9. Analog circuit performance depends much (more, less) on the manufacturing process than does digital circuit performance.
10. (T or F) Very large companies like Motorola, LSI Logic, and Samsung are relying less on in-house foundries and more on outsourcing the manufacture of chips.
Results
The effectiveness of this technique was assessed by using an end-of-the-term questionnaire that asked the students how well the reading assignments met the five criteria that were used for article selection. The results for two terms are reported below. Recall that in fall 2001 the focus was on nanotechnology and in fall 2002 the focus was on embedded systems. The responses for fall 2001 are shown in parentheses and the fall 2002 results are shown in brackets.
Questions and Responses
(Instructions to students) These reading assignments were intended to achieve the objectives listed below. For each objective, please indicate if that objective was met, partially met, or not met.
Objective 1: Acquaint you with the state-of-the-art in selected areas.
Objective 1 was: met(15)[13] partially met(2)[8] not met(2)[0]
Objective 2: Cover some lecture topics in more depth.
Objective 2 was: met(9)[11] partially met(9)[8] not met(1)[2]
Objective 3: Introduce you to important topics not addressed in class.
Objective 3 was: met(17)[16] partially met(2)[5] not met(0)[0]
Objective 4: Demonstrate that what you have learned in class applies to the real world.
Objective 4 was: met(15)[14] partially met(4)[7] not met(0)[0]
Objective 5: Demonstrate that previously unknown or obscure/intimidating areas of the professional literature are now understandable/accessible to you.
Objective 5 was: met(14)[12] partially met(5)[9] not met(0)[0]
In summary, the student responses indicate that 95% of the students considered that objective 1 was met or partially met. For objective two the result was 93%. For objectives 3,4, and 5, the results were 100%.
Students were also asked if they would have preferred a term paper, with the following results.
Would you have preferred a term paper requirement instead of the reading assignments and quizzes? Yes(1)[2] No(18)[19]
Conclusions
The student evaluations indicate a very positive opinion of the described technique. Personal observations and informal feedback from the students complement these results. On a separate end-of-the-term class survey, approximately 10% of the students indicated that the article assignments were the part of the course that they “liked most.”
The technique discussed herein has been especially easy to implement for computer architecture, which has benefited from Moore’s Law over the past four decades -- with the likelihood of continuing for another decade or so (22). This technique has also been used successfully in a computer networks course, another area that is currently realizing explosive growth and activity (23).
Personally, the most enjoyable part of implementing the technique was selecting and reading the articles; the least enjoyable was preparing the quizzes. One small downside of this technique is that there is little carry over from term to term. Each term new articles must be selected and new quizzes prepared.
References
1. Hennessy, John L., and David Patterson (1998) Computer Organization and Design, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, California.
2. ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/pub/spim
3. Stix, Gary (2001) “Little Big Science,” Scientific American 285(3), pp 32-37.
4. Drexler, K. Eric (2001) “Machine-Phase Nanotechnology,” Scientific American 285(3), pp 74-75.
5. Smalley Richard E. (2001) “Of Chemistry, Love and Nanobots,” Scientific American 285(3), pp 76-77.
6. Whitesides, George M., and J. Christopher Love (2001) “The Art of Building Small,” Scientific American 285(3), pp 39-47.
7. Morrison, Christopher (2001) “Biotechnology Makes Quantum Dot Leap,” IEEE Spectrum 38(9), pp 28-33.
8. Roukes, Michael (2001) “Plenty of Room Indeed,” Scientific American 285(3), pp 48-57
9. Ashton, Christopher (2001) “Biological Warfare Canaries,” IEEE Spectrum 38(10), pp 35-40.
10. Lieber, Charles M. (2001) “The Incredible Shrinking Circuit,” Scientific American 285(3), pp 59-64.
11. Barr, Michael (2001) “Memory Types,”, Embedded Systems Programming 14(5), pp 103-104.
12. Sweeney, Dan (2001) “Emerging RAM Technologies,” Embedded Systems Programming 14(3), pp 63-70.
13. Allen, Alan, et al (2002) “2001 Roadmap for Semiconductor Technology,” IEEE Computer 35(1), pp 42-53.
14. Wolf, Wayne (2002) “What is Embedded Computing?” IEEE Computer 35(1), pp 136-137.
15. Martin, Grant, and Frank Schirrmeister, (2002) “A Design Chain for Embedded Systems,” IEEE Computer 35(3), pp 100-103.
16. Clark, David (2002) “Mobile Processors Begin to Grow Up,” IEEE Computer 35(3), pp 22-25.
17. Wolf, Wayne (2002) “Household Hints for Embedded Systems Designers,” by W. Wolf, IEEE Computer 35(5), pp 106-108.
18. Conte, Thomas M. (2002) “Choosing the Brain(s) of an Embedded System,” IEEE Computer 35(7), pp 106-107.
19. Wolf, Wayne (2002) “Whither Warhol’s Law?” IEEE Computer 35(9), pp 96-97.
20. Levin, Peter L., and Reinhold Ludwig (2002) “Crossroads for Mixed-Signal Designs,” IEEE Spectrum 39(3), pp 38-43.
21. Port, Otis, et al (2002) “Chips on Monster Wafers,” Business Week, November 4, 2002, pp 122-126.
22. Bass, Michael J. and Clayton M. Christensen (2002) “The Future of the Microprocessor Business,” IEEE Spectrum 39(4), pp 34-39.
23. Rupf, John (2002) “How to Add a State-of-the-Art Component to Your Course,” The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges 18(2), pp 356-361.
John A. Rupf
Purdue University, PhD. Associate Professor, School of Computing and Software Engineering, Southern Polytechnic State University, Marietta, Georgia. Teaching and research interests include digital design, computer architecture, computer networks, and structured cabling.
[1] School of Computing and Software Engineering, Southern Polytechnic State University, Marietta, Georgia.