Learning objectives

Postcondition A learning objective for a course is something the student is expected to know and understand or to be able to do by the end of the course. The learning objectives for this course are given below. Taken together, this set of learning objectives constitute the postcondition of the course.

1.

Students should know and understand

a.

basic Unix commands and how the shell works

b.

principles of makefiles

c.

principles of assemblers and assembly languages

d.

how high-level language constructs are translated into assembly

e.

arrays and addressing, parameter passing

f.

how the stack works, recursion

2.

Students should be able to

a.

write Unix shell scripts

b.

write makefiles

c.

write assembly programs

d.

optimize code for performance

e.

profile programs

f.

measure performance

Precondition The precondition of the course is the set of university-level learning objectives that the student is expected to have achieved before the start of the course.

The precondition includes

1.

basic knowledge of computer architectures

2.

basic knowledge of C

Mapping to attributes with their indicators The table below shows how the course objectives of the course map to the graduate attributes and indicators relevant for this course. These graduate attributes and indicators are a subset of the full list provided by the Office of the Associate Dean (Academic) that are required by the CEAB (Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board.) The numbering used for the graduate attributes and indicators matches that given in the document produced by the Office of the Associate Dean.

Xl

1. Knowledge base for engineering
1.4 Competence in specialized engineering knowledge & 1a-1f

Problem Analysis
6. The ability to use of modern/state of the art tools & 2a, 2e

3. Investigation
3.3 Estimates outcomes, uncertainties and determines appropriate data to collect & 2e, 2f

4. Design
4.1 Recognizes and follows an engineering design process & 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d
4.3 Proposes solutions to open-ended problems & 2c

5. Use of engineering tools
5.2 Demonstrates an ability to use modern/state of the art tools & 2a, 2e

Learning outcomes A learning outcome is a measure of how well the students in a course have met one or more of the learning objectives of the course. For this course, there is a learning outcome corresponding to each learning objective (of the postcondition). The learning outcomes are expressed as rubrics; they are found at the end of this document.