Reducing the entrance hurdle in embedded systems engineering courses

Abstract

The common approach teaching Embedded Systems Engineering is "Bottom-up", which introduces the "Embedded World" to the students at bit level abstraction. The analysis of students-feedback showed that this approach has demotivating effects as there is a quite big entrance hurdle. The alternative approach is to start at Operating System level and gradually migrate to direct hardware access. The students are already familiar with Operating Systems, since they use them every day and the curriculum prematurely provides them with knowledge about it. This means starting to teach Embedded Systems Engineering at Operating System level picks up the students at an already existing base of knowledge and guides them to the basics of Embedded Systems Engineering.