INTERACTIVE JAVA APPLETS TO TEACH FUNDAMENTALS OF MICROPROCESSORS

DR. MAHER I. RAJAB Assistant Professor in Computer Engineering Department, Vice-Dean of College of Computer & Information Systems, University of Umm Al-Qura, P.O. Box 5555, Makkah, KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA rajabmah@uqu.edu.sa

. .. rajabmah@uqu.edu.sa : rajabmah@yahoo.com

INTERACTIVE JAVA APPLETS TO TEACH FUNDAMENTALS OF MICROPROCESSORS

MAHER I. RAJAB Computer Engineering Dept., College of Computer & Information Systems, University of Umm Al-Qura, P.O. Box 5555, Makkah, KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA rajabmah@uqu.edu.sa ABSTRACT Engineering e-learning interactive web based courses are playing important roles in teaching different engineering fields. Members in many engineering schools are keening to develop interactive web-based courses for their students. This would enhance learning throughout the use of advanced e-learning tools. In an effort to develop better teaching approaches for fundamental computer engineering courses, interactive course materials have been developed to enhance the learning capability for local and remote students. This research summarizes the work that will be made in a supplementary web-based course of Microprocessors. This course is part of the core curriculum of Computer Engineering Department at college of Computer and Information Systems, Umm AlQura University. The work includes the development of three types of educational materials: web-based lectures or handouts, the design and implementation of interactive tests using Java applets, microprocessor simulation experiments. These educative and interactive materials will be published throughout the instructor domain via the universitys e-learning system. KEY WORDS e-learning, interactive web-based course, java applet, microprocessors.

education (sometimes called e-learning) [2]. It is the most extreme form of online education that uses streaming videos and the more advanced functionalities obtainable in educational software and where there is no actual face to face contact between the teacher and the student [3]. Elearning system involves a systematic process of planning, design, development, evaluation, and implementation to create an online environment where learning is dynamically developed and supported. The success of the e-learning system is associated with its significance to all stakeholder groups including learners, instructors, support services staff, and the institution [4]. The objective of this study is to establish web-based interactive lectures and exercises for the Microprocessors course to provide students with instructional experiences that go far beyond those afforded by standard textbooks and lectures.The web-based course presented here uses java applets classes and html scripts to develop supplementary course materials, for Microprocessors; the next section discusses the need and importance of Java Applet in this course. The innovating of this project is that it is comprehensive which means it contains all parts of the Microprocessors course. It includes the entire theoretical parts and full explanation of five lessons. In addition, each lesson ends with the appropriate video clip to demonstrate the basic microprocessor lab experiments. The level of learner understanding of each lesson is measured throughout concise tests at the end of the lesson.

1. Introduction
In the face of business globalization the engineers have to develop their capabilities to utilize latest technologies [1]. The engineering education must keep the same innovation rate such as research and technology progress. Experts in education consider that educational pedagogy of the future will be based on distance learning and on-line learning methodologies. Thus the higher education systems will be able to upgrade the new needs of the knowledge-market as result of the consequence of globalization. The phenomenon of the total knowledge growth is accompanied with easy information distribution with free or limited access by means of world electronic network. However, in this time the new product in education that empowers the learner in every situation called web-based

2. Why java Applets?

Java applets are programs written in Java that require a World Wide Web (www) browser or another Java application to run. The Program stand-alone that is run using the Java interpreter called Java application. Both applet and applications are compiled using the Java compiler [5]. Java applets are chosen here due its success and application in different fields of knowledge. Moreover, their advantages over the other existing programming environments: 1. Java applets are accessible on the client-side, thus are faster than programs running on remote servers.

2. Java applets can interface with various forms of media formats (such as text, graphics, animation and sound) and languages (JavaScript). Applets can also interact with other applets, with programs on its host server and with HTML/XML documents on remote servers. 3. Java applets can thus provide a better user interaction. 4. Multi-platform versions of educational software are limited, and often have a strong dependency on the underlying hardware. On the other hand, users can access a Java applet using different types of architectures and Java-compliant browsers, but still all see the same information in nearly the same format. An applet is an excellent example of inheritance. When we define an applet, we extend the Applet class or the JApplet class. The Applet and JApplet classes already handle all the details about applet creation and execution, including: interaction with a Web browser, accepting applet parameters through HTML and enforcing security restrictions.

applet parameters through HTML and enforcing security restrictions [6]. The web-based course presented here uses java applets classes and html scripts to develop supplementary course materials for Microprocessors. The online course mainly includes two parts: theoretical and full explanation of lessons. This will allow the students to explore each lesson through easy links. The e-course is designed and implemented in a web page which will allow the students to learn various parts of the course by browsing any desired chapter. The main page of the course contain seven links for seven chapters representing the most important theoretical key notes, chart, figures,etc. of the Microprocessors course. For example if the student press the link "CHAPTER 1", he/she will access the page that shows the contents of chapter one with full explanation and figures. Moreover, html pages of each chapter is ended with a hyperlink called Take the quiz". The link is associated with the java applet class to run an interactive self test. The test contains three types of questions. After answering all of the questions, the student must submit his/her answers by pressing "Submit button. The student's wrong answers are printed in red colour beside each question and final score is printed and the. The student may repeat the same test by clicking onto the "Refresh" icon of the internet browser. label The interactive tests presented in the course are implemented using java applets. The relation between the main class, sub-classes, and objects are demonstrated by one of the interactive tests. Figure 2 show the UML, Unified Modelling Language, graphical representation for Exam class and its three instance class objects: Quiz1, Quiz2, and Quiz3.
Exam

3. Methodology
Assessing large number of university students in basic courses is a difficult task for university staff. So finding an interactive web based style to evaluate the understanding levels is demanding. To implement this target, Java Applet is chosen because it is possible to link classes of quizzes with the web pages. The course is designed to be comprehensive, is contains different parts of Microprocessors course which includes the theoretical parts with full explanation of lessons. These materials are accessible via graphical hyperlinks through the course main page, as shown in Fig. 1. The course website is the gate to the course and their interactive tests.

Quiz1 : Exam

Quiz2 : Exam

Quiz3 : Exam

Fig. 2: Graphical representation for Exam class and its objects.

4. Results
The e-course can be reached via a graphical user interface which will allow browsing the contents of the course through an html page (index.htm). The e-course mainly includes: a) General links that concerned with the course and common use which are: Course Description, Tests & Exams, List of Home Works, Lab Experiments and Others. b) Six main links functioning the six chapters of the course, every link acts an individual chapter (as shown in Figure 1). c) Interactive Java applet test: each lesson ends with a link to the interactive test that has been implemented by java

Fig. 1: The main web page of Microprocessors. An applet is an excellent example of inheritance in object oriented programming OOP [6-7]. When we define an applet, we extend the Applet class or the JApplet class. The Applet and JApplet classes already handle all the details about applet creation and execution, including: interaction with a Web browser, accepting

applet. Figure 3 presents a sample from multiple choice tests. When a student answers all the questions and press Submit button, the applet will correct the wrong answers and will print the wrong answers in red colour.

implemented to establish the basic background and the main concepts of microprocessors. The advantage is to promote the students to study the course and perform tests using computer. The Java Applet is the main tool used in the design and the implementation stages for different types of interactive tests. Future work may have into consideration the possibility to develop simulations of microprocessor architecture and interfacing experiments.

Fig. 3: Sample of the multiple choice test.

e) Interactive Java applets are also implemented to simulate some of the fundamental lessons in the microprocessors course. An example applet is implemented to teach how to generate new four microprocessor control signals ( MEMR , MEMW ,

Fig. 4: Simulation the case of generating microprocessor control signals using 3-to-8 decoder.

References
[1] S. Zaharia, J. Uebersfeld, S. Iordache, M. Atanasiu, Interactive learning environment in mechanics, in International Conference on Engineering Education, August 6 10, 2001 Oslo, Norway. [2] Horton W., Horton K., E-Learning Tools and Technologies, Willey, 2003. [3] E-learning Europe education and culture. [On-line] http://www.elearningeuropa.info [4] K. Campbell, E-ffective Writing for E-Learning Environments, Idea Group Publishing, 2004. http://www.etqm.net/elearn/Digest/jan2004/Article_1.htm [5] University of Cambridge, http://www.cheng.cam.ac.uk/~mkraft/pages/teaching/CET IIB-StoMo/WebModule/bz/node11.html [6] Sun Microsystems.[On-line] http://java.sun.com [7] C. Wu, An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming with Java, McGraw Hill, 4th ed., PP.16-23, 2004.

IOR ,

IOW )

using

the

three

Intel

8085

microprocessor's main control signals: WR , RD , and

IO / M . The new generated control signals are essential in timing four microprocessor's main operations: two signals for memory operations (memory read/ memory write), and two for peripheral operations (Input from and Output to peripheral devices). Three choice boxes are used to simulate the entry of the three microprocessor control signals, as shown in Fig. 4. The student needs to provide the correct binary entries that will yield the new generated control signal at one of the decoder outputs. The applet shown in Fig. 4 is a snapshot demonstrating one of the four invalid outputs cases which will occur
when '0' logic is entered to both WR & RD signals or

WR = 0 & RD = 0 . Another example of Java applet is designed and implemented to simulate the interfacing of an output port using 7-segment display as shown in Fig. 5a. Moreover, the student might reach to the help page which will demonstrate the function table of the output port and will aid to deliver the correct entries to the data
bus, address bus, and WR control signal (see Fig.5b).

5. Conclusion
Fundamental of Microprocessors is an essential course for computer engineering students. Interactive materials are

(a)

(b) Fig. 5: (a) Simulation the case of interfacing a sevensegment display. (b) A page shows the Help window to aid the student to deliver the correct entries to the java applet in (a).