A Logical Course of Teaching
Professor Neil Burgess
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
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"I wanted to emphasise the difference between university and school. The underlying assumption is that university students should be more independent learners"
Description | Aims | Process | Evaluation | Contact
Description
Logic Design is a first year subject introduced in 1996. Made up from a balance of new material and a previous third year topic, the subject aims to give a grounding in the theory and practice of logic design with a particular reference to computers. After passing this subject, students should be familiar with methods for specifying and synthesising logic circuits, and be prepared for more advanced studies in computer hardware and their operation.
With a projected class size of 150 students, all the well-known problems of the lecture format were likely to be exacerbated, so a group problem-based approach was implemented.
Aims
- to motivate students
- to promote independent learning
- to get students used to working on major problems in groups
- to demonstrate to colleagues that alternative teaching methods are possible
Process
The whole subject is overarched by a project to design a simple computer, called the ultraRISC processor, that has only 15 instructions. At the first class meeting the students self-organise into groups of 4. Each group has 7 WorkPackage topics: the first 6, at a frequency of one per week, introduce the concepts and techniques of Logic Design; the 7th WorkPackage defines the operation of the ultraRISC processor and invites the students to exploit the "missing" 16th instruction to enhance the processor's performance.
The students are asked to keep a log-book of their meetings, progress, opinions, hurdles encountered, etc. The log-books are inspected three times during the semester and are also handed up with the final design.
The last meeting of the class is a mock sales convention where each group gives a poster presentation extolling the clock speed, number of gates and other design features of their processor. This meeting introduces a small element of peer review since each group is asked to nominate its preferred five (rival) designs. A small mark (out of 4) is awarded proportional to the number of "votes" a group's design receives.
These group based exercises count for 50% of the assessment, the other 50% being an open book exam, which one colleague aptly named an "honesty check".
Evaluation
A Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) presented mixed results. The statements "The novel style of teaching employed by the teacher should be continued" and "I prefer this style of teaching to a lecture-based approach" both divided the students evenly. More encouraging results were obtained from the statement "Overall, the assessment of the subject was fair" (65% of students agreed with this).
One point worth noting here is that student approval, although important, was not the aim of the innovation, which was to improve independent learning. The following student quote captures the ambivalence that students perhaps felt when confronted with a new learning and teaching style:
"Initially I didn't like his teaching method, but looking back, I think it worked well: If a lecturer tells me something, I'll forget it; if I look it up in a book, I'll forget it as well, but at least I'll know where to find it later".
The designs that were handed up demonstrated clearly that the more able student groups really "took off" in exploring a wide number of issues outside the planned syllabus to enhance their designs' performance. These enhancements were, not unnaturally, heavily promoted at the convention and led to much interaction between the student groups in justifying claims made on the posters.
The less able students typically stuck to carrying out the letter of the WorkPackages and if the material didn't say "Try to enhance your processor's performance in any way you can" then there was plainly no need to do so!
Finally, there was a strong correlation between the course assessment marks and the exam marks achieved.
Professor Neil Burgess can be contacted on:
Telephone: (029) 2087 5197
Fax: (029) 2087 4716
e-mail: burgessn@cf.ac.uk
Division of Electronics,
School of Engineering,
Cardiff University,
Queen's Buildings,
The Parade,
PO BOX 689,
Cardiff CF2 3TF
Wales, U.K.
last updated 19/03/99
