This paper describes a course on microcontrollers, in which the principal learning activity happens in small group projects. The course design includes some unusual solutions, such as a group and project lottery, or the inter- and intra-group peer assessment scheme. The details of the design of the course are presented, together with some variations tried. Some reflections are offered on the choices made, and some ways in which this teaching format may be improved have been suggested. The experiences with this course have been positive, and group projects can be recommended without reserve to all courses on this and similar subjects.
DjukicD., ‘Experiences with group projects in teaching micro-controllers’ in Proc. AEESEAP-04, 5–7 December, 2004, Albany, New Zealand.
2.
DjukicD., ‘Small group projects in engineering education – an experience’, Current Developments in Technology-Assisted Education (2006), (Proc. m-ICTE 06), 22–25 November, 2006, Sevilla, Spain, Vol. 1, pp. 621–625.
3.
BournerJ.HughesM.BournerT., ‘First-year undergraduate experiences of group project work’, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 26(1) (2001), 19–38.
4.
HenryJ., Teaching Through Projects (Kogan Page, London, 1994).
5.
BosworthK., (Ed.), Collaborative Learning: Underlying processes and effective techniques (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, New York, 1994).
6.
RaceP., 500 Tips on Group Learning (Kogan Page, London, 2000).
SwellerJ., Instructional Design in Technical Areas (The Australian Council for Educational Research, Camberwell, 1999).
9.
WeissB.GridlingG.ProskeM., ‘A case study in efficient microcontroller education’, SIGBED Review, 2(4) (2005), 40–47.
10.
Cruz-RiveraJ. L., ‘A project-oriented approach to teaching software-hardware integration of microcontroller-based systems’, in Proc. 28th FIE Conf., 4–7 November 1998, Tempe, FL, USA, pp. 64–68.
11.
TorrojaY.GarciaO.RiesgoT.de la TorreE., ‘Teaching embedded systems and microcontrollers using scale models’, in Proc. 31st IECON, 6–9 November 2005, Raleigh, NC, USA, pp. 2180–2183.
12.
DjukicD., ‘Rapid introduction to assembly language programming’, Proc. SIENZ'07, 26–27 November 2007, Auckland, New Zealand (published as soft copy).
13.
BaileyD. G.O'DriscollR. C.MercerK. A., ‘Teaching electronics through an integrative project’, in Proc. AEESEAP-04, 5–7 December 2004, Albany, New Zealand, pp. 121–126.
