Interactive Content Objects for Learning Digital Systems Design

Abstract

Interactive content objects (ICOs) are immersive digital tools (e.g., simulations or interactive experiments) that students can use to generate responses, analyze data, etc. That way they can follow given examples or experiment with their own conceived variants and thus come to new insights interactively. The integration of such tools into a learning system, in which theory is usually taught by means of texts and graphics, opens up new possibilities to apply what has been read directly and thus to understand it better. To teach a systematic approach to methods of designing digital systems, we have realized a collection of such interactive tools, which show in particular the connections between different methodical approaches of design procedures. Based on the latest web technologies, the design of the tools takes into account the possibility of embedding them in different learning scenarios (e.g., mobile or stationary). In the paper, we present some of these tools and show how to use them to provide a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between different theoretical approaches.