An Integrated Learning Approach Used in Computer Architecture

Student-centered learning has been discovered as the most effective pedagogy for teaching and learning science process skills and content. However, in some difficult curriculum, use of student-centered learning pedagogy only for enhancement of engineering student skills has its drawback. This paper presents a back-and-forth based pedagogy integrated with the studentcentered learning for engineering and computer science student curriculum enhancement in Computer Architecture course. In the back-and-forth based learning, course materials are logically decomposed into interconnected pieces. The previous section will be frequently reviewed by the instructor later, on a back and forth basis, while some assignments are assigned to students for enhancement of their learning quality. A series of well-prepared review problems, examples, and assignments were assigned to students to cover various previous topics in this course, which assist in student learning enhancement of hardware and programming skills in Computer Architecture course. Satisfactory performance was evaluated by various milestone review sessions, assignments, in-class exercises, exams and other activities. Results of learning outcomes and assessment indicate that this integrated learning pedagogy is effective and efficient in student learning and improving the quality of computer design and organization.