Building Interactive Tutorials Using Visual Basic

In this computer information age, computers in education play a major role in effective learning. This paper presents the development and the aspects of a graphical, user interactive, Visual Basic tutorial, to learn VHDL via computers. VHDL, a hardware description language for Very High Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC), is used to model digital systems. The digital system can be a simple logic gate or a complicated electronic system. VHDL is an IEEE, as well as an ANSI standard for describing digital designs. The learning of VHDL can be made more effective by means of an interactive tutorial. Visual Basic (VB), the vehicle to the exciting world of Internet and World Wide Web programming, is used for this purpose. Being a powerful programming language, VB helps students visualize complicated circuits and concepts of VHDL. VB is used to design the graphical user interface and MS Access is used to store the questions and answers the students may need for their practice.