HIERARCHICAL

CONSTRUCTION OF TEACHING FACULTY IN

COMPUTER ORGANIZATION AND DESIGN

Tianzhou Chen, Gang Wang, Wei Hu and Qinsong Shi

College of Computer Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

Keywords:

Hierarchical construction, Teaching faculty, Computer organization and design.

Abstract:

With the rapid development of computer hardware, computer architecture and organization becomes more and

more important for the student to enter the computer world. It is a great challenge for the teaching faculty

not only inherits classical teaching materials but also keep up with the world trends. In this paper, we present

a hierarchical construction of teaching faculty in course of ”Computer Architecture and Organization”. Both

the methodology and implementation is included to show how our design works. The achievement we get

recent years show that our teaching faculty’s effort leads to a satisﬁed result and keeps a health development

continuously.

1 INTRODUCTION

With the development of computer science, com-

puter education meets great challenges to keep up

with the world trends. Many new courses have to

be designed according to the latest computer tech-

nologies. However, there are many basic courses

that keep in the history of education of computer sci-

ence. Computer Architecture and Organization is one

of them. It’s one of the basic courses of computer

science and showed in the Joint IEEE Computer So-

ciety/ACM task force on the ”Model Curricula for

Computing” (CC). Both CC2001 (CC2001, 2001) and

CC2005 (CC2005, 2005) showed that the Computer

Architecture and Organization is one of the required

course.

Basic principles about the architecture and orga-

nization of a computer occupy a place in the core of

most computing curricula. (Cassel et al., ) said that

these topics must be taught as basic knowledge of

computer hardware, since computer architecture has

great impact on both the hardware design and the soft-

ware design. Also, there are wide variations in the ex-

pertise and interests of faculty assigned to teach them.

Some faculty who teach these subjects are deeply in-

volved in the topic areas, others have substantial ex-

perience but a different primary focus, and still oth-

ers are clearly teaching outside their area of experi-

ence and expertise. In all cases, the faculty are chal-

lenged to remain current in the topic and to address

both the fundamental principles and ramiﬁcations of

recent developments. Though this course has a long

history, how to keep the teaching faculty well pre-

pared to meet the challenges remains a big problem

in the construction of the teaching group.

In this paper, we present a hierarchical construc-

tion method of teaching faculty in Computer Archi-

tecture and Organization. Both the methodology and

the implementation of the hierarchical construction

are discussed in our paper. The design is already

applied in College of Computer Science of Zhejiang

University and achieves success in real world.

2 BACKGROUND

Computer Architecture and Organization is aimed at

teaching the fundamentals of the computer organiza-

tion and design. Upon completion of this course, a

student should be able to explain the operation of a

CPU, understand the merits of virtual memory, cache

and interrupt system, and analyze the fundamentals

of I/O system. The emphasis of this course is on the

basic issues of computer organization and computer

design. Computer organization is concerned with the

way the hardware components are connected together

to form a computer system. Computer design is con-

cerned with the development of the hardware for the

computer taking into consideration of a given set of

261

Chen T., Wang G., Hu W. and Shi Q. (2010).

HIERARCHICAL CONSTRUCTION OF TEACHING FACULTY IN COMPUTER ORGANIZATION AND DESIGN.

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 261-264

DOI: 10.5220/0002756102610264

 SciTePress

speciﬁcations. In this course, students will learn the

principle and hardware implementation of computer

components, and how to completely design a correct

single processor computer.

The course ”Computer Architecture and Organi-

zation” starts in early 1978 in Zhejiang University.

The web side of the course is opened in 2000 (ZJU.,

). The teaching faculty is combined with 9 professors

and 36 lecturers. Most of them come from System

and Architecture Research Institute of Zhejiang Uni-

versity. The construction of the teaching faculty will

guarantee the sustained development and innovation

of the education system. Hierarchical construction is

our main guidelines. Method such as feedback sys-

tem and training program are parts of the hierarchical

construction system.

3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Hierarchical Age Distribution

The age distribution of teaching faculty is one of the

important issues of the faculty construction. Since

teachers with different ages are different from their

education, teaching style and so on. Main differ-

ences from young teachers and experienced teachers

are showed in Table 1.

Table 1: Comparsion of the young teachers and the experi-

enced teachers.

Young teachers Experienced teachers

Strength ∗Fast learning ∗Full of teaching experience

∗Knowledgeable ∗Systematic teaching method

on new technologies

Weakness ∗Lack of ∗Knowledge structure

teaching experience is relatively old

Figure 1 is the hierarchical age structure of our

teaching faculty. Here we deﬁne two ﬂows: knowl-

edge ﬂow and experience ﬂow. Knowledge ﬂow in-

dicates the new technologies that the young teachers

may obtain and will pass to the faculty. Simultane-

ously, teaching experience pass down from the expe-

rienced teachers to the rookies. Middle layer is the

middle-aged teachers whose properties are between

young and experienced teachers.

3.2 Hierarchical Training Program

Training program is a part of our hierarchical con-

struction methodology. The training is not only for

young teachers but also designed for experienced

Experienced teachers

Young teachers

Middle layer

Experience flow

owl

edge fl

Figure 1: Hierarchical age structure of our teaching faculty.

teachers. Since the young and experienced teachers

are different as showed in Table 1, we should design

different training programs to meet different require-

ments. Figure 2 gives the structure of our hierarchi-

cal training program. The training program is divided

Education theory training

International

cooperation

Group discussion

Course reviewing

Model course

revealing

Outer

training

Inner

training

Figure 2: Hierarchical training program.

into two parts. The inner training is the basic pro-

gram.

In next section, we will present the implementa-

tion of our methodology on our practice of the course

on Computer Architecture and Organization. Besides,

achievement we get will also be included.

4 IMPLEMENTATION AND

ACHIEVEMENTS

4.1 Hierarchical Construction

Our teaching faculty are most from System and Ar-

chitecture Research Institute of Zhejiang University.

9 professors with 36 lecturers construct the teaching

team of the course. The age distribution is showed

CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education

262

in Figure 3. Teachers older than 51 years old are de-

ﬁned as experienced teachers and the teachers under

35 years old are young teachers. By this division, the

experienced teachers occupy about 26.3% of the fac-

ulty while the young teachers are 36.7%. The mid-

dle aged teachers occupy 36.7%. The age distribu-

tion is balanced and hierarchical. Among the faculty,

professors, associate professors and lecturers are as-

signed to cooperate. The distribution is showed in

Figure 4. The distribution is 26.3%, 42.1% and 31.5%

for professors, associate professors and lecturers re-

spectively.

Figure 3: Age distribution of our teaching faculty.

Figure 4: Title distribution of our teaching faculty.

4.2 Training Program

4.2.1 Model Course Revealing

With the efforts of our faculty, the course on Com-

puter Architecture and Organization is assigned State-

level Courses. The model course can be accessed on

the internet. Both teachers and the students can learn

the course through the web page. Videos of real teach-

ing procedure are presented not only for student to do

the remote education.

4.2.2 Course Reviewing

The course reviewing system is designed for helping

the teachers to get the feedback from the experienced

teachers or experts. We offer this opportunity for any

teacher in the team. Every teacher will give an open

lesson. We will set up an expert team to attend the

lesson.

4.2.3 Group Discussion

Group discussion is an easy way for the teaching fac-

ulty to share their experience and ideas. Our teaching

faculty are divided into several small groups. Every

group is composed with young teachers, middle-aged

teachers and experienced teachers. Every group will

have a short discussion once a week. The content is

not ﬁxed. Every half semester, there will be a con-

ference for all the faculty. Every group will give a

standardized report to share their achievements.

4.2.4 International Cooperation

In order to keep up with the newest achievement in

the world, our team cooperates with foreign universi-

ties, as well as companies. Foreign universities will

share their education experience with us. And com-

munication with the companies will help our teachers

to enhance the understanding of the industry world

and minimize the gap between the education and the

actual needs. A lot of famous lectures and researchers

are invented to our university.

4.2.5 Education Theory Training

Reﬁning the theory is very important in education.

Our team not only pays attention to the education

practice but also to the reﬁning of the theory. We have

published a lot of education papers on both domes-

tic and international conferences and journals. By the

year 2008, we have published 24 research papers on

the education of Computer Architecture and Organi-

zation. Besides, our faculty attended the international

conferences not only to learn from the educators but

also to share our achievements. We also hold an inter-

national workshop on 2008. It was the ﬁrst Interna-

tional Workshop on Computer System Education and

Innovation (IWCSEI 2008).

4.3 Course Feedback

In order to measure the result of our courses, we de-

veloped a feedback system to let the student to make

HIERARCHICAL CONSTRUCTION OF TEACHING FACULTY IN COMPUTER ORGANIZATION AND DESIGN

263

the evaluation. Our feedback system is based on in-

ternet. Student can make their comments both on the

course design and content but also the teachers. We

designed several questions for the students. Figure 5

and 5 shows the result of the feedback from the stu-

dents. In Figure 5 listed satisfaction of the students of

Figure 5: Satisfaction of the students.

the course from 2005 to 2008. The satisfaction ratio

is about 95.2%. Detailed score is showed in Figure 6.

We list 8 questions:

QA: Teaching style is serious and responsible.

QB: Teaching expression (oral, writing) is clear.

QC: Teaching content is advanced, proper arranged

and focused.

QD: Using advanced teaching methods

QE: Heuristic teaching.

QF: Gain much during the course.

QG: Satisfaction with teacher.

QH: Teaching materials is suitable and with high

quality.

These questions are designed to evaluate the effect

Figure 6: Detailed feedback from the students.

of our teaching. Figure 6 is the result we get from

2007-2008. The average satisfaction is 99.5%.

5 CONCLUSIONS

With the development of computer science, computer

architecture and organization changed a lot. The ed-

ucation on such a topic should not only keep the

classic theories but also absorb the newest technolo-

gies. A health construction of the teaching faculty

will keep the team keep being improved. In this

paper, we present our Hierarchical construction of

Teaching Faculty in Computer Architecture and Or-

ganization. Hierarchical age distribution and hierar-

chical training program are our main methods. Dur-

ing the implementation, our methods achieve great

result. Most students are satisﬁed with our course.

Research papers on education are published. We

also invent experts from both the foreign universities

and companies. International communication is made

through attending international conferences and hold-

ing a workshop on education.

REFERENCES

Cassel, L., Holliday, M., Kumar, D., Bolding, K., Davies,

J., Impagliazzo, J., Pearson, M., Wolffe, G., and Yur-

cik, W. Distributed expertise for teaching computer

organization & architecture.

CC2001 (2001). The joint task force on comput-

ing curricula ieee computer society associa-

tion for computing machinery. computing cur-

ricula 2001 computer science. december 15,

2001,http://www.computer.org/education/cc2001/.

CC2005 (2005). Cc 2005 curriculum guidelines for

undergraduate degree programs in computer sci-

ence.http://www.acm.org/education/curricula.html.

ZJU. http://multicore.zju.edu.cn/.

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