Context as Support for Learning Computer Organization

Abstract

The ubiquity of personal computational devices in the lives of today's students presents a meaningful context for courses in computer organization beyond the general-purpose or imaginary processors routinely used. This article presents results of a comparative study examining student performance in a conventional organization course and in one that has been contextualized using a personal gaming platform as the pedagogical architecture. We find minimal differences in student learning but significant motivation and engagement gains for those in the contextualized course.