Development of an educationally oriented open-source embedded systems laboratory kit: A hybrid hands-on and virtual experimentation approach

Abstract

Embedded microcontroller (MCU) systems is one of the most important topics in undergraduate electrical and electronics engineering and computer engineering curricula. Laboratory sessions are vitally important in teaching/learning of MCUs. Unfortunately, most commercially available MCU development kits are not well designed for educational purposes. In this paper, we report on the design and implementation of an educationally oriented MCU kit. The design aimed to produce a fairly universal training board that can cover a range of experiments for different topics, which resulted in embedding a rich group of peripherals. Furthermore, the kit was associated with student-centric lab manuals, training exercise, video materials, and virtual MCU experiments. This paper presents a pedagogical investigation of the impact of using the embedded systems virtual labs for preparation. The quantitative results show statistical evidence that preparation with a virtual embedded systems lab results in higher learning outcomes.