Integrating Assembly Language Programming into High School STEM Education (work in progress)

Learning assembly language as an introduction to programming can be beneficial to high school students. From the very beginning, students are taught programming relationships to a processor through the use of registers, memory, and the control unit. Students can build upon these fundamental ideas so that higher level languages are more thoroughly understood. This paper describes a high school STEM education curriculum that provided sophomores hands-on opportunities to learn and understand microcontrollers through assembly language projects. The course assessment evaluated the students’ computer science knowledge, course expectations, learning perspectives, creativity, and future field of study interests. Initial results indicate that students have a greater breadth of knowledge, a stronger positive perception of computer science, and a greater self-efficacy while at least maintaining student interest and creativity. Observations of the students indicate that the investigative nature of programming with microcontrollers is motivating the students to seek further programming courses.