Design of a Processor to Support the Teaching of Computer Systems
DELTA '02 Proceedings of the The First IEEE International Workshop on Electronic Design, Test and Applications (DELTA '02)
Harnessing FPGAs for Computer Architecture Education
MSE '03 Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Microelectronics Systems Education
Computer games and CS education: why and how
Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
MARS: an education-oriented MIPS assembly language simulator
Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
A games first approach to teaching introductory programming
Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Game2Learn: building CS1 learning games for retention
Proceedings of the 12th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
FPGA Prototyping ByVerilog Examples
FPGA Prototyping ByVerilog Examples
Computer games and traditional CS courses
Communications of the ACM - Finding the Fun in Computer Science Education
Designing Computer Games to Teach Algorithms
ITNG '10 Proceedings of the 2010 Seventh International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations
Teaching digital design to computing science students in a single academic term
IEEE Transactions on Education
Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
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The design of computer games can be a powerful motivator as students learn about computer architecture and design. Students in classes where computer designs are developed and implemented (usually on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs)) seem much more highly motivated if their computer design can be used for something visual and interactive when the project is complete. However, ensuring that the student teams can have a working game by the end of a semester requires careful planning of how their computer designs will interact with the world. Keyboard inputs and VGA outputs are a relatively simple set of I/O interfaces that open up significant new potential for development of game applications on the student's own computer designs. In this paper we describe the curriculum of a computer design course that uses game design as a "carrot" to encourage active student exploration and deeper understanding of computer architecture, I/O subsystems, and computer implementation.