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Development of 8086 Microprocessor Course for Web-based Learning

Article · January 2002

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 Development of 8086 Microprocessor Course for Web-based Learning

M. Mohandes, Sharif Iqbal, A. Abul Hussain, Noman Tasadduq, Abul Bashar

Electrical Engineering Department & Deanship of Academic Development
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia
[email protected]

ABSTRACT
The rapid advancement in educational tools experienced over the recent decades has introduced
online teaching environments that can facilitate or help develop virtual universities. As more and
more students are obtaining free Internet access, we see instructors starting to provide class
information, events, lectures, labs, tutorials, etc. on-line. The King Fahd University of Petroleum
and Minerals (KFUPM) has embarked on an initiative to develop courses across all its
engineering departments for web-based learning. This paper outlines the development of Digital
Systems Engineering (8086 microprocessor) course as part of this initiative. This course is now
in its first year of implementation. Initially, it was used entirely as supporting or supplementary
material. Feedback taken from students indicated that the e-material enhanced their
understanding of the course.

1. Introduction
Digital Systems Engineering (EE 390) is a basic course on microprocessors at the
Electrical Engineering department of KFUPM that is offered each semester in the
academic year. Moreover it is a basic required course for any electrical engineering
program worldwide. In this course, students learn about the 8086 microprocessor, its
architecture and its instruction set in detail. This course also enables the students to write
comprehensive assembly language programs. It is a practical oriented course and is,
therefore, very helpful to students in their senior design projects.
This course provides junior and sophomore students in electrical engineering the
ability to design a complete microprocessor or microcontroller system. Practical
microprocessor systems are studied in the course to enable the student to follow an
application-based approach.
The objective of developing this course for online delivery is to provide an
interactive, convenient, and self-paced, e-learning tool for teaching the fundamentals of
this course which is to be delivered on the WebCT platform. The WebCT platform
provides essential Communication and Course Management tools required in effectively
teaching this course fully online. The material developed and delivered via WebCT can
also be used to supplement the classroom lectures and can also be utilized in a blended
mode of learning. Online quizzes together with assignments will provide a means of
assessing student learning and progress.

2. Instructional Design and Preparation of Course Contents

It is very important to come up with a proper instructional design in the
development of online courses that charts out the strategies for meeting course objectives
and requirements of delivering an online course. A course blue print has been developed
for this purpose. We carried out the instructional design for this project based on the
ADDIE (analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate) model.
The textbook [1] and syllabus used for the classical method of course delivery
forms the basis of the material covered in the e-course. It is based mostly on the lectures
taught in the face-to-face classes with adaptations for an online course. Care was taken
not to overwhelm the students with excessive course material while at the same time
covering the course knowledge adequately. The EE390 online course is divided into the
following four modules and there are 30 lectures in all.

 Module 1: Introduction to Microprocessors

 Module 2: Microprocessor Programming and Assembly Language
 Module 3: Memory Devices and Interfacing
 Module 4: I/O Device Interfacing and Microcontrollers

3. Course Development
The development of the e-course [2] went through several stages. The course
material was first prepared using Microsoft Office, MathType and Visio. The entire
course was then developed for e-learning using Macromedia Authorware [3][4][5] as an
authoring tool which allows the publishing of course lectures in HTML format for
delivery over the internet. The development of the material was carried out in the
following phases:
  Phase I: Transfer of Course Material to Authorware
 Phase II: Preparation of Speech Files
 Phase III: Creation of Animations and Interactivities
 Phase IV: Refinement of Lectures & Interactivity
 Phase V: Publishing of Lectures for WebCT

The course material features interactive examples, graphics and animations with
supporting speech. An automatic Text-to-Speech software [6] tool was used to generate
the speech files. Each lecture has several practice problems to make the material
interactive and to test the student’s ability to grasp the material being presented in the
lecture. Efforts have been made to make the material interactive and to enrich it through
audio, graphics and animations.

4. Interactivity and Multimedia features

Interactivity is a very important element of a good online course. Interactivity
helps in better understanding of concepts and ideas. Well designed interactivity can
arouse students’ interest in the material and encourage active participation in learning
online. The term, interactivity, describes the forms of communication that a medium
supports enabling dialogue between the learner and the instructor and is an important
attribute of technology-supported educational environments. The intelligence of the
technology is used in place of the instructor and exchanges are made between the learner
and the programmed instructional system. The interactions in electronic learning
environments are able to enhance learning through the feedback they provide and the
context and purpose they are able to encourage support [7].
With the above in mind, a number of interactive circuits were created which allow
a student to interact with the circuit, change input values and watch how the output is
affected. It must be noted that what can be demonstrated through interactive circuits and
examples in the e-material is not possible at all in a traditional face-to-face class. This is a
distinct advantage of online courses over the classical form. The following are some of
the interactive circuits in the e-course:
 Hex to Binary Conversion Shift Right Instruction
Binary Arithmetic Rotate Left Instruction
MOV Instruction Rotate Right Instruction
Addressing modes Address Bus Latch
XCHG Instruction Bus Transceiver
Logic Instruction I/O Interfacing
Shift Left Instruction 8255 in Mode 0

It has also been found from student feedback that concepts that are difficult to
understand in a face-to-face class or which take longer for an instructor to explain in the
class are easily understood by way of interactive examples.

5. Interface
An effective use of multi-media rich e-learning material depends on an
appropriate interface design to enable trouble free and easy access to these features [2]
[8]. The interface design provides ease of navigation, a sense of human interaction, and
responsiveness to the needs of learners studying in an information rich, self directed
medium.

Fig. 1. Basic navigational structure

Each lecture has multimedia features and buttons for navigation (as seen in Figure 1)
through the material and a few special functions as mentioned below:

 Previous and Next slide buttons

These buttons allow navigation through the material one slide at a time.
 Topics button
Each lecture is divided into sub-topics which can be directly accessed through the
Menu. Pressing the Menu button brings up the topics menu.
 Replay button
This button allows the student to repeat the presentation on that slide.
  Fast Mode – Check box button
While the Fast Mode feature is active the presentation of the material is speeded-
up and sound is turned off. This is particularly useful for a quick review of the
material.
 Pause button
This feature allows the students to pause the presentation if he is to quit at some
specific point in the slide. Pushing the pause button again will resume the
presentation.
 Glossary button
Pressing this button brings up the glossary of basic terms used in the lecture.

6. Sample Screen-shots from the Online Course Material

In this section, we show screen shots of some of the interactivities we have
developed for this online course. The Figure 2 shows an interactive example that
demonstrates how the Rotate Left (with or without carry) instructions work. A student
can select the desired number of rotations and then press one of the RUN buttons to see
how the operation is performed by the microprocessor.

Fig. 2. Interactivity on Rotate Instructions

 The interactive example shown in Figure 3 demonstrates how the 8255
Programmable Peripheral Interface device can be configured in Mode 0 to provide
input/output ports to the microprocessor. By setting/resetting particular bits in the Control
Word, the 8255 ports can be programmed to operate either as input or output ports.

Fig. 3. Interactivity showing 8255 PPI configuration in Mode 0

The next interactive example shown in Figure 4 demonstrates how input/output

devices are interfaced to the microprocessor. This interactivity also shows how the input
or output operations are performed by the microprocessor and what control signals are
generated by the microprocessor to carry out these operations.
A student can select a certain input by pressing the input switches and then press
the IN instruction button whereupon the microprocessor will read the status of the
switches into the AL register. Thereafter, if the OUT instruction button is pressed, then
the microprocessor will send the contents of the AL register to the lamps.
 Fig. 4. Interactivity showing I/O Interfacing

7. Course Implementation
After the completion of the course development, the online course was offered
initially as supplementary material. The objectives of offering the course as
supplementary material are to test the effectiveness of the online material and to get
feedback from students. A further objective is to enable faculty members teaching the
course to become more familiar with the elements of the online course [5] [9].
Following this supplementary phase, the course was offered in a blended mode to
allow parts of the course to be taught completely online. Based on feedback from the
students and instructors, the entire course may be taught completely online in future.
Other online developed courses at the EE department have also been provided as
supplementary material. All students enrolled in these courses have been given access to
the material hosted on WebCT as they are given free Internet accounts.

8. Conclusion
We believe that development of this course for e-learning (with all its multimedia
elements, animations and interactivity) has definitely benefited students in understanding
the architecture, programming and interfacing of microprocessors. For instance,
 interactive examples and animations are used to demonstrate how an instruction is
fetched, decoded and executed by the microprocessor. They are also used to demonstrate
to students how the Arithmetic and Logic unit functions in a microprocessor and how the
components outside the microprocessor are interfaced, which is otherwise not possible to
show in a traditional classroom lecture.

9. References

[1] “The 8088 and 8086 Microprocessors Programming interfacing, software, hardware
and applications”, 3rd edition, Walter A. Triebel and Avtar Singh, Printice Hall, 2000.

[2] How to Develop an Online Course,

http://stylusinc.com/online_course/tutorial/process.htm

[3] Using Authorware, Macromedia, Inc., 600 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94103,
First Edition, August 2001.

[4] S. Junaidu and J. Al-Ghamdi, “Developing an Online Data Structures Course Using
Authorware”, USDLA Journal, Vol. 16 No.10, October 2002
http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/OCT02_Issue/article07.html

[5] A Guide for Course Developers, Deanship of Academic Development, KFUPM

[6] TTS (Text-To_speech) Software, AT&T Bell Labs,

http://public.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/

[7] Oliver, R., Herrington, J. and Omari, A. (1996). Creating effective instructional
materials for the World Wide Web. [verified 3 May 2002]
http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw96/educn/oliver/index.htm

[8] Allison Brown, “Designing for learning: What are the essential features of an
effective online course?”, Australian Journal of Educational Technology 1997, 13(2),
115-126

[9] Guidelines for Course Implementation, Deanship of Academic Development,

KFUPM.

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