An Interdisciplinary Approach to Motivate Students to Learn Digital Systems and Computing Engineering

We report a new learning approach in collaborative learning-by doing, real-world team-based project in two ICT courses: Digital Systems and Computing Engineering, conducted at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. Data collected included: background information on students; course evaluations; measures of the knowledge and cross-knowledge of both disciplines taken before and after our SimulAVR project. SimulAVR integrates interdisciplinary knowledge by simulating via software a microcontroller and its implementation in VHDL. Our study is based on the analysis of the results of running the project for 3 years. After taking the simulAVR project, the students rated the interest in both courses higher.