The three-week workshop is enhancing the ability of faculty in undergraduate computer science programs to develop and teach courses in the areas of systems programming, computer operating systems, computer networking and computer architecture. In particular, the workshop is aimed at: increasing faculty members' knowledge of both the characteristics of the hardware components and the interaction among these components within a computer system, and developing effective techniques for transmitting this knowledge and understanding to students. Faculty participating in the workshop are primarily involved in the design and implementation of laboratory experiments which illustrate many of the basic principles of integrating the components of a microprocessor-based computer system. For example, experiments are being developed to illustrate the capabilities and limitations of various microprocessors, the different memory mapping schemes, interrupt handling techniques, and a variety of peripheral interfaces. Workshop participants are also discussing the integration of these laboratory experiments into their computer software systems curricula. Detailed descriptions of the experiments developed through this workshop will be disseminated to the academic computer science community.
