356 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 54, NO. …web-ext.u-aizu.ac.jp/~leijing/@L.Jing Papers/Journel... · lecture, demo, and hands-on ... (OJT) is therefore still the normal

356 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 54, NO. 3, AUGUST 2011

A Spiral Step-by-Step Educational Method forCultivating Competent Embedded System

Engineers to Meet Industry DemandsLei Jing, Zixue Cheng, Member, IEEE, Junbo Wang, and Yinghui Zhou

Abstract—Embedded system technologies are undergoingdramatic change. Competent embedded system engineers are be-coming a scarce resource in the industry. Given this, universitiesshould revise their specialist education to meet industry demands.In this paper, a spirally tight-coupled step-by-step educationalmethod, based on an analysis of industry requirements, is pro-posed. The learning process consists of multiple learning circlespiled up in a spiral. Each learning circle consists of three steps:lecture, demo, and hands-on practice, which are tight-coupled toenable students to readily revisit essential knowledge. The circlecurrently being studied is directly based on the previous circle, soas to maintain a smooth learning curve. Since students can quicklysee the result of their work, their motivation to learn remainshigh. Since a learning circle takes only a short period to complete,the core knowledge and skills can be repeated in different formsacross the three types of educational step so that students canmaster them. The students’ achievement and performance usingthe proposed method show that it can enable them to master therequisite knowledge and effectively transform this into skills.

Index Terms—Embedded systems, engineering education,project-based learning (PBL), step-by-step learning, univer-sity–industry cooperative education.

I. INTRODUCTION

T HE main characteristics of today’s embedded systemsare function integration and a rapid development cycle.

For resource optimization and the cost control, most large-scaleembedded systems are developed through multinationalcooperation.

With globalization, the demand for embedded system engi-neers (SEs) in Japan is shifting from quantity to quality. Al-though there is still a huge demand for embedded system engi-neers in industry, this demand is decreasing year by year. Forexample, according to a survey report of the Japanese Ministry

Manuscript received January 04, 2010; revised April 19, 2010; accepted May23, 2010. Date of publication August 03, 2010; date of current version August03, 2011. This work was supported in part by the METI and MEXT through theAsia-Jinzai Project, a career development program for foreign students in Japan.

L. Jing and Z. Cheng are with the School of Computer Science and En-gineering, University of Aizu, Aizu-Wakamatsu 965-8580, Japan (e-mail:[email protected]; [email protected]).

J. Wang is with the Graduate School of Computer Science and Engineering,University of Aizu, Aizu-Wakamatsu 965-8580, Japan (e-mail: [email protected]).

Y. Zhou is with the School of Electrical Engineering, Yanshan University,Qinhuangdao 066004, China (e-mail: [email protected]).

Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available onlineat http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2010.2058576

of Economy, Trade and Industry, the demand decreased by about30% over three years, from 99 000 in 2007 to 69 000 in 2009 [1].Therefore, the question of how to improve the quality rather thanthe quantity of IT employees has become the most importantfactor. According to the 2009 questionnaire of the IT HumanResources White book, 32.4% of companies feel that their num-bers of high-quality human resources are extremely inadequate.Moreover, 75% of companies put the highest priority on how toretain these high-quality employees [2].

Higher education should satisfy this demand for high-qualityengineers. In this paper, industry demands for university edu-cation, as expressed in a series of discussions, are clarified inSection II. Related works are discussed in Section III. Then, tomeet the multidisciplinary features of the embedded systemsfield and to meet industry demand, a spirally tight-coupledstep-by-step educational method is proposed in Section IV.The design of a fundamental course on embedded systems ispresented in Section V to illustrate the use of the proposedmethod. The hands-on practice of the course is introduced inSection VI. Evaluation and discussion of the method are givenin Section VII. Finally, conclusions are given in Section VIII.

II. INDUSTRY DEMAND TO HIGH-QUALITY ENGINEERS

In this section, educational goals are presented based onan analysis of industry requirements for embedded systemengineers.

A. Roles of University and Industry

In industry, it is not cost-effective to design systematictraining programs for employees. Traditional on-job training(OJT) is therefore still the normal way for employees to learnthe necessary skills. However, with the trend for large-scalesystems and complex division of labor, employees are onlyable to learn specific domain skills and have little chance to geta “a big picture” of the whole embedded system field and thewhole development process. Moreover, in most universities,courses on embedded systems are rarely based on industrydemands, leading to duplication of training between universityand industry.

To solve the above problems, universities should design thecourses according to industry demands, and the educational re-sults should be evaluated by industry. In the case of this paper,some specialists from the embedded system industry were in-vited to form a committee. The committee gave advice on coursedesign through periodic meetings with faculty and students. The

0018-9359/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE

JING et al.: SPIRAL STEP-BY-STEP EDUCATIONAL METHOD FOR CULTIVATING COMPETENT EMBEDDED SYSTEM ENGINEERS 357

Fig. 1. Skills set for embedded system development.

Fig. 2. Architecture of the technology elements.

evaluation was obtained, in the form of interviews and reports,from companies providing internships.

B. Technology, Knowledge, and Skill

For the purposes of this paper, technology, knowledge, andskill are defined as follows. Technology is the process used tomeet a requirement. Mature technologies are documented asknowledge that is deterministic and can be conveyed to others.Skill is the ability of specific human beings to use relevantknowledge and tools to accomplish the process. To master atechnology, both knowledge and skill are indispensable.

Knowledge can be taught in lectures, but skill has to belearned through practice. An important evaluation standardfor an educational methodology is whether it can effectivelytransform knowledge into skill.

C. Knowledge and Skills Required by Industry

The knowledge and skills for embedded system developmentcan be divided into three categories: technology elements,development and management skills, and personal ability, asshown in Fig. 1.

1) Technology Elements: Technology elements are the tech-nologies needed to realize specific mechanisms in embeddedsystems [3]. The technology elements on the branches of theknowledge tree are domain specific; see Fig. 2. However, uni-versity education should emphasize the essential elements onthe trunk to facilitate their future development.

2) Development and Management Skills: Development skillsare skills used in the system development process, such as pro-gramming, system design, debugging, and test. Managementskills are skills to make the project progress smoothly, suchas time management, cost management, and risk management.Practical experience of development and management skills are

Fig. 3. Mapping relation between the objectives of university education andthe requirements of competent SEs.

important for all engineers. Even if they cannot master all thenecessary skills for each step, experiencing development andmanagement skills can give a big picture of embedded systems,which nowadays is difficult for field engineers to get. Moreover,the experience of the whole process gives students a chance todiscover the work that really interests them and to clarify theircareer direction. Furthermore, the big picture can function as aroad map for their further learning activities.

3) Personal Ability: Personal ability depends on individualpersonality, which needs a long time to be cultivated. Interper-sonal skills are crucial for project success, and thus indispens-able qualities for a competent engineer.

D. Educational Requirements for Universities

University education should satisfy industry demands.1) Requirements for Competent System Engineers: As a con-

clusion of the previous discussion, competent embedded SEsshould have interdisciplinary talents, with extensive knowledgeof the specific subject domain and of other related domains,high skills on the specific tools and platforms, and high personalability, as shown at the bottom of Fig. 3. They should not onlybe specialists in one or more specific domains to solve specificproblems, but should also have general knowledge of related do-mains, the whole embedded system architecture, and the wholedevelopment process so that they can cooperate with other teammembers.

2) Objectives of University Education: These objectivesshould be accomplishable through a series of educational ac-tivities. Moreover, university education should set the stage forthe future success as competent embedded system engineers. Inthis paper, the specific objectives are to have students master theessential knowledge, get the big picture of embedded systems,and receive basic training for personal ability, as shown at thetop of Fig. 3. This knowledge and these skills can set the stagefor students to meet the requirements for being competentengineers through OJT once they join companies.


In this paper, the discussion will focus on the two of the threeobjectives: mastering the essential knowledge and having thebig picture of embedded systems, both achieved via the pro-posed method.

III. RELATED WORK

Lecture-centered educational methodologies are one of theeffective ways for knowledge learning [4], but they do not helpstudents transform their knowledge into skills.

Combined lecture-laboratory methodologies have beenadopted in some curriculum designs for skills training [5]–[7].Laboratory work can consolidate the learned knowledge andtransform some of this into skills through practice, but thelimited time span of a laboratory means that students cannotpractice in depth.

Given the multidisciplinary nature of embedded systems,practical-orientated student-centered active learning methodslike project-based learning (PBL) [8], [9] and problem-basedlearning [10] have been discussed in the design of embeddedsystem courses. In such methods, the students are the center ofthe educational activity, and instructors act as a supplementaryfunction. The students have enough time to experience thewhole process of embedded system development and improvetheir personal ability through cooperative work. However, thereis a limitation in PBL. First, students have difficulty startingtheir project in spite of having the necessary knowledge andskills. Second, PBL alone will not enable novices to equipthemselves rapidly with fundamental knowledge and skills.Third, students cannot perform an in-depth study if they do nothave the necessary knowledge.

To combat these deficiencies of PBL, other educational activi-ties, such as lectures and lab work, have been combined into cur-riculum design [11], [12]. However, new problems arise. Firstis a contents mismatch between different educational activities.Generally, inadequate timely communication between instruc-tors means that different instructors decide upon the contents ofthe different educational activities, which will hinder the trans-formation of knowledge to skills. Second is the timing mismatchbetween different educational activities. Timely review is an im-portant cognitive principle of learning, but it is difficult to ar-range activities to let students revisit the knowledge in a timelyfashion; arranging a lab class immediately after lectures is notalways possible. Third, and most critical, is the gap between thedifficulty levels of different educational activities. Gaps betweendifficulty levels exist between the lecture and lab [11], the laband project [12], [13], and so on. How to bridge these gaps toavoid steep learning curves is the core problem in the design ofan embedded systems course.

In [14], a spiral curriculum for chemical engineering edu-cation is evaluated. Fundamental courses introduce chemicalscience knowledge to freshmen. Sophomores then revisit theknowledge with a series of projects. A comparison betweenthe spiral method and traditional method was performed. Spi-rally taught students showed a much more positive attitude to-ward chemical engineering and teamwork than did the tradition-ally taught students. A hint is given from this research that thelearning effect may be improved by shortening the spiral cycle,

Fig. 4. Step-by-step educational method.

so that the students can quickly consolidate their learned knowl-edge and skills.

Based on these discussions, a spirally tight-coupled step-by-step educational method is proposed in this paper, which inte-grates several educational activities into one course to tightlycouple the learning of knowledge and skills in terms of contents,timing, and difficulty. Through various activities, including lec-ture, demo, lab, and project, the cognitive requirements are in-creased gradually so that students can complete the learningprocess smoothly. In particular, the demos are integrated intothe course so as to bridge the gap between the lecture and lab.Each demo can give the students a timely review of the con-cepts. Moreover, all of the architecture and components of theexperimental platform used in the lab are introduced to the stu-dents through a series of demos. The details of this method areintroduced in the following sections.

IV. SPIRAL STEP-BY-STEP METHOD

To meet the educational objective, a comprehensive ed-ucational method called the spiral step-by-step method isproposed, “step-by-step” being the way to learn the knowledge,and “spiral” being the way to arrange the knowledge. Thesetwo key concepts are described here.

A. Step-by-Step

Each step consists of one kind of educational activity, such asa lecture, demo, or lab. Step-by-step means that these activitiesare arranged according to cognitive theory gradually to deepenthe understanding of core knowledge.

According to cognitive theory, the understanding levels of agiven subject can be divided into three categories: “I know”;“I can do”; “I adopted and adapted” [4]. Generally, the first andsecond levels can be accomplished in a relatively short period.The third level requires repeated practice over a relatively longperiod. Thus, to reach the second level is a more reasonablegoal for formal or school learning. To reach the second level,multiple educational activities are combined according to thehuman cognitive principle, Fig. 4, to allow students to experi-ence the knowledge or skills from different aspects through dif-ferent activities.

In this paper, to allow students to master the core knowl-edge, the curriculum was designed to enable them to revisit thematerial in a timely fashion, through tight coupling of the dif-ferent types of educational activities according to the cognitiveprocess. For example, to learn the concept of interruption, thestep-by-step learning process is arranged as follows. The goal


Fig. 5. Spiral step-by-step educational model.

of the lecture is to let the students know what an interruption is.The teacher can start from an example in the real life, such ashaving to answer a telephone while reading a book. This givesstudents an image of the concept. Then a definition is given totell the students what an interruption is in the case of embeddedsystems. Then a demo (such as an interruption happening whenpushing a button to flash an LED) is shown to the students. Stu-dents can control the button and read the source code to deepentheir understanding. At this stage, the students have the nec-essary knowledge, but not enough skill to put this interruptionknowledge into practice. So before they do the project, the nec-essary skills are introduced in the lab classes. Then the studentscan work together to accomplish the assigned projects, duringwhich they have to make the best use of the interruption mech-anism to solve various problems. At the end of such a learningcircle, the students will reach the “can do” level having revis-iting the material in different forms (lecture, demo, lab, andproject) over a short period.

B. Spiral Step-by-Step

Spiral step-by-step means that the different types of knowl-edge are grouped into several stages and taught sequentially sothat the students can concentrate on one type of knowledge at atime to reduce the cognitive load. Once the sequence is deter-mined, multiple ascending circles (stages) are linked to form aspiral; see Fig. 5.

For any given knowledge, the students can reach the secondunderstanding level through the step-by-step learning process,following an ascending learning circle, Fig. 4, which starts fromthe lecture and ends at the project. They will then feel preparedand confident to step up to the next circle.

The learning contents of the next circle (stage) should bebased on the contents of the current circle (stage). Students canbe viewed as goal-directed agents who actively seek informa-tion. When they begin a learning process, a range of prior knowl-edge, skills, and concepts will significantly influence the waysthey organize and interpret the new knowledge [15]. All of thesewill affect their abilities to remember, reason, solve problems,and acquire new knowledge. Thus, an important principle in ar-ranging the knowledge is that the prerequisite knowledge shouldbe taught first.

Generally, the sequence is determined not only by the depen-dence relationships among the educational contents, but also bythe students’ background knowledge.

V. FPES COURSE DESIGN—A CASE STUDY

The method introduced was put into practice in the ITNisshinkan program, which is a subprogram of the Asia-JinzaiProject supported by the Japanese Government. The purpose ofthe program is to cultivate high-quality international embeddedsystem engineers. In this section, one of the courses for theprogram, FPES #963 (Fundamental and Practice of the Em-bedded Systems), which was designed based on the proposededucational method, will be introduced as a case study.

A. Learning Contents

The demands of industry and students were taken as theguidelines in choosing the learning contents. As shown inFig. 3, the essential knowledge, the big picture of embeddedsystems, and personal ability for embedded system develop-ment were selected as the core of the course. Therefore, all theeducational activities relate to them.

Interrupt, timer, and general-purpose input output (GPIO) areselected as essential knowledge elements because they are keyconcepts in understanding the interaction between hardware andsoftware; they are prerequisites for understanding the other tech-nical elements like universal asynchronous receiver transmitter(UART), Watchdog, and wireless; and because almost all em-bedded applications are either time-driven or event-driven orboth.

To form a big picture of embedded systems, students shouldbe given the chance to experience the whole process of em-bedded system development including both hardware andsoftware.

According to industry demands, as well as providing knowl-edge and skills, the course integrates competency training in-cluding problem solving, self-learning, and communication.

B. Syllabus

The syllabus is designed to include all of the learning contentsand to be accomplished within 16 sessions (1.5 h/session). Twosessions are given in each week of the eight-week course, whichcan be finished in one school quarter. It is also suitable for short-term training in many companies.

As shown in Table I, important concepts, like GPIO, Timer,Interrupt, and FSM (finite state machine), are distributed be-tween different lectures, so that in each session students canconcentrate on just one or two important concepts.

Moreover, to help students review and practice the knowledgethey have learned, the course is divided into three parts: Lecture,Demo, and Practice (lab and project).

The Lecture focuses on having students “know.” The basicconcepts, including hardware, software, and model-based de-velopment, are explained by the teachers.

The Demo focuses on having students “see.” After each lec-ture, a demo is given to help the students deepen their under-standing of the just-learned knowledge.


TABLE ISYLLABUS FOR FPES #963

The Practice focuses on having students “do.” It can be fur-ther divided into two parts: practice in class and practice afterclass. The “in class” part consists of two lab classes, one discus-sion forum, two student presentations, and two invited lectures.The “after class” part consists of two projects: CUTEBOX hard-ware development and embedded software development. Thestudents can experience embedded system development directlythrough the lab classes and projects; they also acquire indirectexperience from the guest lecturers invited from the front lineof embedded system development. Moreover, they can practiceand improve their self-learning, problem solving, and commu-nication skills through the investigation and discussion forums.

C. Experimental Platform

The course is based on an original experimental platformnamed CUTEBOX. The hardware design and sample codecan be found and freely downloaded from http://cutebox.wikispaces.com/.

D. Demo Design

Eight demos were designed for the FPES. Each demo is givenat the end of the respective lecture for about 10 20 min. Thepurpose of the demos is to let the students revisit the newlylearned important concepts in a more concrete way to improvetheir comprehension.

Each demo is designed to show the use or mechanism of theessential knowledge element. For example, a demo was givenof the GPIO working mechanism taught in the lecture. At first,the demo of LED controlled by a switch was shown using theCUTEBOX. Then, there were quizzes on how to use the CPU’sGPIO to control the LED, and so on, to stimulate the students

to think about the inside working mechanism. Furthermore,the illustration of the working mechanism was presented by ananimation as shown in Fig. 6. The students could understand thedifference between the input mode and output mode. Finally,the source code for setting GPIO was shown to the students.The LED demo and animation were intuitively understood.Moreover, through the demo, the abstract GPIO mechanismwas connected with the CUTEBOX system with which thestudents are familiar. When doing their hands-on practice usingthe CUTEBOX, the GPIO would be brought back to theirminds, which further improved their understanding.

Additionally, most of the demos were interconnected. Asshown in Table I, all but the sixth and seventh of the eightdemos are based on the CUTEBOX. In the first demo, Fig. 7,as an example of the embedded system, the architecture andcomponents of the CUTEBOX were introduced. In the second,third, fourth, and fifth demos, the different components wereintroduced. In the eighth demo, the applications developedby the students were presented. Through the interconnecteddemos, the students formed a big picture of embedded sys-tems. Moreover, the mapping relations between the essentialknowledge and the components of CUTEBOX are strengthenedthrough the demos. The ensuing hands-on practice can helpstudents to connect their experience with the concepts they havelearned; this deepens their understanding and avoids superficiallearning.

VI. HANDS-ON PRACTICE

The practical items and required time are listed in Table II.This art consists of two lab classes and two projects, which areclosely interconnected. The technical knowledge is taught in the


Fig. 6. GPIO demo through the button control on LED.

Fig. 7. First demo using CUTEBOX.

TABLE IIHANDS-ON PART PLAN AND NECESSARY TIME

lecture, and technical skills are taught in the lab classes. Then,with the help of the teaching assistant (TA), the students practicethese skills during the project development.

Fig. 8. Making the PCB.

The total time taken is about 22–38 h, of which hardwaredevelopment and software development take 30% and 70%,respectively. The two lab classes take the in-class time. Theprojects are assigned as homework.

A. Lab Class 1: Hardware Development

The lab class is used to learn the necessary skills to accom-plish the hardware development project.

A lightweight printed circuit board (PCB)-making method,based on positive photoresist fiberglass, was adopted for thehands-on practice for the following three reasons. First, it isaffordable for most educational budgets. A complete set ofthe necessary experimental devices costs less than US $1000in Japan. A set of experimental expendables for one groupcosts no more than $20. Second, the operation of these de-vices is straightforward, so the students can concentrate onunderstanding of the whole process and underlying theory.Third, even though lightweight, this technique covers the mainprocess steps of PCB making, such as artwork generation,exposure, developing, etching, and so on. Based on the labclass experience, the students were able to understand the mainmanufacturing process when they visited a cell phone factoryof the Fujitsu group.

The students were given the chance to experience a wholehardware development process, learning the technique skills inthe lab classes and practicing them in the project development.Then, after class, each student was required to develop a pieceof PCB under the instruction of the TA; see Fig. 8.

B. Project 1: CUTEBOX Hardware Development

The students practice the knowledge and skills they learnedin the hardware learning circle through creating the hardware ofCUTEBOX. All of the students experienced the PCB-makingprocess by making the CUTEBOX, and successfully ran a testprogram on their own board.

Through working on the hardware debugging according tothe circuit diagram, they mastered basic testing methods usingmultimeters and oscilloscopes, such as how to check for shortand open circuits.

The students met various kinds of failures before finally suc-ceeding. Failure is a good way to learn. For example, a studentfailed three times on the etching step. Each time, the TA wouldexplain the technical points on the artwork generation, exposure,


TABLE IIIPROJECTS ACROSS AY2008 AND AY2009

developing, and etching. Although the student spent longer onthese steps, he had mastered the process and the backgroundtheories more thoroughly than the other students.

C. Lab Class 2: Software Development

The second lab class lets students learn the necessary skills toaccomplish the software development project. In the class, theyexperienced the development process for an embedded systemthrough the development of a flashing LED program, using theCUTEBOX as mentioned in Demo 3. During this, the studentswere trained to use the specific tool chain for CUTEBOX soft-ware development.

Then, a sample project was used to show how to do basicproject management and how to control some more complicateddevices, like GLCD, sensors, and UART, through the existinghardware abstraction layer (HAL).

D. Project 2: Embedded System Application Development

In order to understand the essential knowledge, the relation-ship between the software and hardware, the control of the ded-icated devices, and the restrictions on resources and time, thestudents had to complete an embedded system based on theCUTEBOX through teamwork.

The project goal is determined based on two elements. First,the project should be interesting and challenging for the stu-dents so that they actively take part in the project development.Second, it should be reasonable and feasible. The learned es-sential knowledge could be put into practice in the project, andthe work load should be such that the beginners could finish inabout 20 h.

The students were divided into several groups, with membersbeing drawn from different countries, so that they could experi-ence an environment of international team-based development.

They had to select a project subject by discussion amongthemselves and with the help of the supervising teacher. Acrossthe academic years 2008 and 2009 (AY2008 and AY2009),

eight projects were proposed and carried out by the students asshown in Table III. The details of these projects can be found athttp://cutebox.wikispaces.com/.

Once each group understood what they were supposed to do,they had to draw up a development schedule. To help the teacherto follow the progress of each group, a group leader was as-signed to take the responsibility of reporting progress to theteacher.

VII. EVALUATION AND DISCUSSION

The FPES course was given in AY2008 and AY2009, respec-tively, to a total of 26 international students from five countries.According to a precourse questionnaire survey, most of themhad no direct experience of embedded system development, butmost of them were familiar with C language.

A comprehensive assessment was performed to evaluate thestudents’ performance in the two core educational objectives:for them to master essential knowledge and to have a big pictureof embedded systems. The evaluation was carried out in twoways: a questionnaire-based evaluation to reflect the students’feedback on the validity of the educational methodology, and aquantitative evaluation of the final paper examination to assessthe method’s effectiveness for learning the essential knowledgeand the big picture of embedded systems.

A. Questionnaire and Interview

A survey of the students’ response was performed at the endof the course. Twenty-four questionnaires were completed (2out of 26 students did not fill out the questionnaire). The surveyincludes two parts: a questionnaire answered by the studentsto evaluate the validity of the educational methodology, and aninterview between the teacher and each student to understandthe students’ opinions directly by face-to-face communication.

The questions and the corresponding survey results are shownin Table IV. The students were asked to mark the questions on a5-point scale, namely: 5—A (Agree), 4—PA (Partially agree),3—(N) Neutral, 2—PD (Partially Disagree), 1—D (Disagree).


TABLE IVSUMMARY OF SURVEY DATA ON THE VALIDITY OF THE COURSE DESIGN

According to the survey, 71% of students agree and 29% ofstudents partially agree that the learning process is effective(Q1).

About 92% of the students had a positive attitude toward thedemos as a straightforward way of concept understanding (Q2).In the interview, one student suggested that, as an alternative,it might be better to inset multiple demos in one lecture. Otherstudents said that the time allowed for the demonstration was abit short, and they would have preferred a longer time to operatethe demos by themselves.

About 88% of the students thought that the skills learned inthe lab class are necessary for project development (Q3). In theinterview, several students said that the contents of lab classeswere necessary, but not enough. They thought that the time forlab classes should be increased so that they could learn moretechnologies so as to allow them to develop more interestingprojects.

The students showed strong interest in the projects, especiallythe hardware development part. Most of them thought that thehardware skills are important, and that the hardware knowledgemakes software development more interesting for them. Moststudents felt that the level of difficulty of the projects was appro-priate for them, this being their first embedded system project.However, some students also pointed out that they were not ableto grasp the purpose of each and every development step whilethey were busy doing the concrete development, which indicatesthat it is important to make sure every team member takes partin the project design process.

About 83% of students agree or partially agree that the projectteamwork was effective, while about 17% disagreed (Q4). Mostof the students had realized the importance of first planning theirwork and then carrying out the plan. It was further found to beimportant to make sure that the students can understand whatthey are doing if they are to cooperate effectively.

Most students (about 96% agree or partially agree) wouldlike to introduce others to this way of learning, which indicatesthat they think the course is useful (Q5). In terms of motivation,about 88% of the students feel somewhat confident to tackle em-bedded system development projects in their future work (Q6).

From this discussion, the overall response of the students wasoverwhelmingly positive toward the FPES course, which wasconfirmed in the interviews as well. The experience of havinggiven the FPES course has demonstrated the feasibility of thestep-by-step method.

B. Effectiveness of Knowledge and Skills Learning

To evaluate the educational effect, a written 2-h final exami-nation was taken at the end of the FPES course in AY2009. Allof the 17 students enrolled took this examination. The maximumscore was 100, consisting of true–false questions (20%), single-answer questions (20%), calculation questions (20%), and de-scriptive questions (40%).

Here, a quantitative analysis of the data from the writtenfinal examination is performed to evaluate the effectivenessof the spiral step-by-step educational method. The knowledgeunits in the examination are divided into two categories, asshown in Table V. The first of these categories is the knowledgelearned through the whole step-by-step learning circle, whichis taken as representing the proposed educational method; theother is the knowledge learned through a single part of learningcircle, which is taken as typical of the conventional method ofeducation. The two categories are represented by two sets ofknowledge units, called KU1 and KU2, respectively. AlthoughKU2 has fewer educational activities in the class, the studentswere expected to review this knowledge as homework. The twoknowledge sets are given almost the same time in the lecturesand similar difficulty level in the examination, are learned bythe same group of students, and are taught by the same instruc-tors; the only variable is the educational method. An assessmentcould thus be made of the impact of the proposed educationalmethod through the comparative study of the proposed and theconventional method.

The two categories are shown in Table V. The upper halfof the table shows the KU1 knowledge units, whereas thelower half of the table shows the KU2 knowledge units. Thecolumns give a list of the knowledge units for each cate-gory, the corresponding educational activities (steps) for theunits, the degree of comprehension for each knowledge unit(DCU), and the degree of average comprehension for eachcategory.

For each knowledge unit in KU1 and KU2, the examinationmay consist of different numbers of questions, which might beof a single type or of several different types. Generally speaking,the students’ scores in the examination reflect their degree ofcomprehension of the knowledge. Therefore, the DCU is the


TABLE VSUMMARY OF WRITTEN FINAL EXAMINATION ON THE KU1 AND KU2 (L: LECTURE, D: DEMO, P: PRACTICE)

weighted average of the degree of comprehension for the rele-vant questions in the exam, as shown by

number of questions per knowledge unit (1)

where is a knowledge unit, is the number of questions for ,is maximum score of question , and is the degree

of comprehension for question derived from the students’ an-swers to question and equals the average score of all students’scores divided by the maximum score of the question as

number of students (2)

where is the number of students, and is the score ofstudent on the question of knowledge unit .

Taking the knowledge unit “Interrupt” as an example, thisunit has three questions with maximum scores of 2, 2, and 16,respectively, in the exam. The corresponding of the threequestions is 70.59%, 100%, and 59.19%, respectively, with the

of the third question (marked as Q3 in the exam) beingcalculated as

(3)

Then the of the knowledge unit “Interrupt” is calcu-lated, giving a result of 64.41%

(4)

By inspecting Table V, it can be seen that almost all the DCUsin KU1 are higher than those in KU2, and that the average degreeof comprehension of KU1 (69.86%) is about 15% higher thanthat of KU2 (54.55%), which means that the spiral step-by-steplearning circle results in an enhancement in comprehension ofthe learning contents over the conventional method. This canbe attributed to the educational method allowing the studentsto revisit the knowledge in different forms over a short periodof time. Instead of becoming bored by monotonous learningmethods, students’ motivation remained high throughout thewhole course as they made a complete embedded system ontheir own.

It could be questioned whether the results of a written ex-amination could reflect the effectiveness of skills learning. Astraightforward way to evaluate the skills learning is to examinethe project outcome. The project outcomes show that studentscan efficiently use the necessary skills. All groups completedthe assigned projects on time.

Moreover, a further study was made on the relation of the stu-dents’ project performance and their written exam performance.The project score is the average score of two items: the randomoral examination during the project development and the finalproject report.

The Pearson correlation coefficient between the examinationscore and the project score is 0.71, which is higher than the cor-relation coefficient for the specific degree of freedomat the 99% confidence level. This shows that the two variableshave correlation dependence, which indicates that the knowl-edge learning and skills learning are tightly coupled in the spiralstep-by-step method.

From the above discussion, the written final examination re-flects students’ level of understanding of the knowledge, and theprojects reflect their ability to master and apply this knowledgeto solve real problems.

VIII. CONCLUSION

Embedded systems education at the university level shouldmeet industry demands and reflect industry trends, which are


seldom spelled out in the embedded-system educational field.This paper has presented the core qualities of competent em-bedded system engineers. A clear goal for university educa-tion was established according to the industry demands. A spi-rally tight-coupled step-by-step educational method was pro-posed to help students to master the fundamental knowledgeand skills for embedded system development. A fundamentalcourse in embedded systems was used to illustrate the applica-tion of the educational method, and its effectiveness was con-firmed through the course evaluation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors are grateful to the students in the Asia-Jinzaiprogram who persevered through the course in AY2008 andAY2009. Moreover, the authors would like to thank the anony-mous reviewers, whose constructive comments have helpedthem greatly to improve the quality of the paper.

REFERENCES

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Lei Jing received the B.Eng. degree in electrical and mechanical engineeringfrom Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China, in 2000; the M.Eng. de-gree in computer science from Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China, in2003; and the Ph.D. degree in computer science and engineering from the Uni-versity of Aizu, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan, in 2008.

From 2008 to 2009, he was an Assistant Professor with special duty in theAsia Career Development Program at the University of Aizu. Currently, he is aSpecial Researcher with the University of Aizu. His research interests includesensor networks, context-aware computing, wearable computing, and ubiqui-tous learning.

Zixue Cheng (M’95) received the B.Eng. degree from Northeast HeavyMachinery Institute, Qinhaungdao, China, in 1982, and the M.S. and Ph.D.degrees in engineering from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 1990 and1993, respectively.

He was an Assistant Professor from 1993 to 1999, an Associate Professorfrom 1999 to 2002, and has been a Full Professor since 2002 with the Univer-sity of Aizu, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan. His current interests include distributedalgorithms, distance education, ubiquitous learning, context-aware service plat-forms, and functional safety for embedded systems.

Junbo Wang received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering and automationand the M.S. degree in electric circuits and systems from Yanshan University,Qinhuangdao, China, in 2004 and 2007, respectively. He is now pursuing thePh.D. degree at the Graduate School of Computer Science and Engineering,University of Aizu, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan. His interests include ubiquitouscontext-aware platforms, ubiquitous learning, and sensor networks.

Yinghui Zhou received the B.E. degree in computer science and engineeringfrom Jiamusi University, Jiamusi, China, in 2001, and the M.E. degree in com-puter science and engineering from Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China,in 2004. She is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in precision instruments andmachinery at the School of Electrical Engineering, Yanshan University. Her re-search is concerned with pattern recognition and e-learning.

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356 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 54, NO. …web-ext.u-aizu.ac.jp/~leijing/@L.Jing Papers/Journel... · lecture, demo, and hands-on ... (OJT) is therefore still the normal