Teaching Computer Architecture: How to Introduce the Class
By: Hessah Alkaoud
Introduction:
Teaching is simple. It does not always require creativity to do it right. It is the art of using the right teaching method for the right student personality in the right environment. How much a particular student learns in a course is actually governed partially by that learner’s native ability and preceding preparation but also by the consistency of his learning style and the teacher’s teaching style. Teachers’ teaching plans can exceed the learning process for the students and can improve their learning quality as well if it is well-matched the students’ learning styles. The concept of learning styles - which states that different learners have different needs, ways of processing and adapting information, and therefore need to be taught differently so that their learning and achievement are more effective – has been a significant area of investigation in learning theories for over thirty years. In this paper I am designing a teaching plan driven by students learning styles and compatible with the basic two types of learning styles: visual and verbal learning styles. Teaching computer architecture has been examined in many ways like prototyping [1], learning through experience [2] [3] but it hasn 't addressed by matching the teaching style with the students learning styles. I chose the first lesson of the computer architecture “introducing computer architecture course to the students” as an example to prove the enhancement of this approach in teaching computer architecture. The paper is divided to some sections. The first one is setting the base knowledge of the terms that will be used through this paper starting from explaining learning styles then going to clarifying the visual and auditory learning styles. After that, I am going to implement the introduced background in computer architecture context to computer architecture course (CS5200) at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Finally, I will suggest how to evaluate
Introduction:
Teaching is simple. It does not always require creativity to do it right. It is the art of using the right teaching method for the right student personality in the right environment. How much a particular student learns in a course is actually governed partially by that learner’s native ability and preceding preparation but also by the consistency of his learning style and the teacher’s teaching style. Teachers’ teaching plans can exceed the learning process for the students and can improve their learning quality as well if it is well-matched the students’ learning styles. The concept of learning styles - which states that different learners have different needs, ways of processing and adapting information, and therefore need to be taught differently so that their learning and achievement are more effective – has been a significant area of investigation in learning theories for over thirty years. In this paper I am designing a teaching plan driven by students learning styles and compatible with the basic two types of learning styles: visual and verbal learning styles. Teaching computer architecture has been examined in many ways like prototyping [1], learning through experience [2] [3] but it hasn 't addressed by matching the teaching style with the students learning styles. I chose the first lesson of the computer architecture “introducing computer architecture course to the students” as an example to prove the enhancement of this approach in teaching computer architecture. The paper is divided to some sections. The first one is setting the base knowledge of the terms that will be used through this paper starting from explaining learning styles then going to clarifying the visual and auditory learning styles. After that, I am going to implement the introduced background in computer architecture context to computer architecture course (CS5200) at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Finally, I will suggest how to evaluate
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