Remote Laboratory System for Microprocessor and Assembly Language Education

Description

Research Overview The evolution of technology and tools assists in transforming teaching and learning to digitization. Digitization of education affects changing the method, time, and place for learning, which supports students at every degree of their education. For engineering and science courses, laboratory experiments in curricula play an important role; laboratory sessions are needed to be available to demonstrate theories and concepts. In the last decade, educational laboratories were effective only using hands-on laboratories. Continuous progress and development in technology and tools enable access to resources and introduce new techniques to deliver laboratory experiments to students. The remote laboratories have been designed to be distance education through the internet; students can perform the experiment with real equipment remotely, it is not required for students to be physically in the laboratories, and the experimental results obtained are real data [1-8]. The Palestinian computer systems engineering curriculum requires laboratory courses as part of the undergraduate program. The Microprocessor and Assembly Language Course is addressed to bachelor's degree programs in computer systems engineering. Additionally, to the reasons mentioned above, on-campus laboratory sessions are difficult to conduct, especially when education in Palestine is delivered online via the Internet (at-home study). When virtual laboratory experiments can be conducted, virtual microprocessor labs are more difficult and do not provide a complete understanding of the concept; especially experiments that require real-time conduct, such as those including real hardware, are obviously insufficient in a simulation or virtual lab. Remote Laboratory System for Microprocessor and Assembly Language Education This research aims to enable the remote operation of laboratory experiments located at PTUK campus for teaching microprocessor and assembly language. A remote system is a system composed of hardware and software components that provides the ability to access the laboratory board through any terminal PC. When a student has compiled his/her program without an error, then he accesses the remote laboratory system, they can upload the compiled program to the target microprocessor unit, and perform their laboratory experiment on real hardware, that facilities solving any faced problem especially the real-time problem. He/she have operationally to repeat their experiment independently of time and place until it is satisfied and deliver the real results from laboratory equipment to the student, for example, webcams deliver live video from the experiments. After that, student can submit the obtained results and their program via the Internet to the system to be graded by the instructors. For this purpose, the remote laboratory needs to design, develop, and implement an appropriate remote laboratory experiment that can be connected and performed remotely using a target microprocessor as used in hand-on laboratory on campus. The remote laboratory system will be based on a client–server structure using a TCP/IP connection, which consists of four parts: • The students can access the laboratory experiments via an internet connection. • The server is used to deliver the data between the student’s PC and the server. • The experimental equipment includes all the real instruments that are required to perform the experiments. • The instructors can assig the experiments and grad the submitted experimental results. Research Methodology The methodology of this research is conducted using sequential stages. The methodology can be divided into four categories as follows: • Identifying the conceptual theories or defining the learning objectives to be achieved while practicing the remote experiments for microprocessor and assembly language course. • Designing the educational remote experiments for the laboratory experimental tasks. • Developing instructions for remote experiments that assist in delivering knowledge to the students and facilitate achieving the learning objectives. This stage may require technical implementation methodology of the remote lab. • Assessing the laboratory experiments, which is necessary to evaluate how the remote experimental practice is in line with the course context as well as the instructions for the remote experiments to improve the learning outcomes. Contributions The research aims to develop and implementing remote system for teaching microprocessor and assembly language. We can summarize the major contributions as follows: • Remote access to the real target microprocessor unit that will be used experimentally to practice the assembly language code written by students. This can assist the students to understand the concept and syntax of assembly language program. • Students will obtain real results from real system, remotely, without any simulation or mathematical modeling. Thus, they will deal with this system in a real world with accurate and reliable implementation. • Students can perform their experiment or project, remotely, to overcome any time restriction and environment of hands-on laboratory, so the system will be flexible in its usage. • Using expensive or scarce board is not a limitation, where laboratory board needs to be available remotely for students. Instead, the remote system can include various microprocessor units that offer high integration, which enables the student to gain students’ skills and understanding for complex functionality design. References [1] A. M. Pascual and B. Jurado-Sánchez, “Remote Teaching of Chemistry Laboratory Courses during COVID-19,” Journal of Chemical Education, 2022, doi: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00022. [2] N. J. Rodríguez-García, I. C. Nieto-Sánchez, and J. N. Mora-Alfonso, Virtual and remote laboratories in electronic and telecommunications: a technical review in education. [Online]. Available: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/524668839.pdf [3] S. AbuShanab, “Remote and on-site laboratory system for low-power digital circuit design,” [Online]. Available: https://dspace.ub.uni-siegen.de/handle/ubsi/1345 [4] S. AbuShanab, M. Winzker, and R. 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