Challenges in Teaching Assembly Language Programming – Desired Prerequisites vs. Students’ Initial Knowledge

The authors present challenges in the teaching of assembly language programming within a Computer Architecture course that they hold on a professionally-oriented three-year study of Electrical Engineering. The premature position of the course within the curriculum and generally low initial knowledge of the enrolled students required the introduction of preparatory classes in digital arithmetic, which are discussed. The conducted surveys show that students largely support those classes and recognize the importance of formal teaching. At the same time, most of them highly overrate their initial knowledge in that area, as was proven by the poor test results. Students mostly agree that they didn’t exert enough effort and that this is the main reason for failing the test and having problems in assembly language programming later on. The authors conclude the paper with the proposal of a new course in the fundamentals of computer science at the beginning of the study, and some other prospects for the future work