Instructional Design of Computer System Fundamentals for Cultivating Students’ Computer System Ability

Many undergraduate students majoring in computer science (CS) can not clearly state the complete execution process of a C program in a computer system, although they have learned many CS courses such as programming, assembly and circuits when they graduate. The reason for this phenomenon is because they lack the computer system perspective and cannot integrate the knowledges of different courses. To solve this problem, we opened a new course computer system fundamentals (CSF) aiming to enable the students to understand how each statement of the C program realizes its functionality by assemble codes (ACs), how these ACs are converted into the machine codes (MCs), how the MCs are stored in the memory system, how these MCs are loaded into CPUs, and how the CPUs execute the MCs. This course can help the students integrate the knowledge of programming, assembly, machine code, instruction set, digital logic and circuits, thereby making them establish a full-stack computer system perspective, build the hardware and software co-optimization thinking, and also improve the ability to solve the complex engineering problems. This course has been teaching in the Internet of Things Engineering major for 4 years, and the course survey result proves it has improved the students’ CSA effectively.