Leveraging student experience with an integrated instructional laboratory

Although incorporating laboratory-based exercises can substantially improve the learning experience for students studying digital system design, the authors recognize that for students to obtain the necessary laboratory skills to use their facilities effectively requires significant commitment of time for both the instructor and the student. Through the use of an integrated and consistent laboratory infrastructure, they have found that they can leverage the student's experience and knowledge of their facilities in order to improve their instructional effectiveness. Their approach focuses on three complementary resources in their laboratory environment: the program development tools; the embedded debug tools; and the architectural organization of the development stations. In this paper, they describe each of these laboratory resources and review the unifying design strategy that integrates the key aspects of each resource into a consistent instructional paradigm. They also discuss the opportunities that this approach has allowed them to pursue in their program and examine how this approach allows them to continue to incorporate new tools and technology as they become available. Beyond the design of laboratory facilities, they believe the instructional paradigm they have developed offers useful insights to any person involved in the development of a multi-semester course sequence.