Construction of Virtual Experiment Laboratory for Education of Computer engineering

从发展电子/计算机工程类实验学科的角度出发，提出了在计算机屏幕上进行虚拟实验室实验。基于微软WINDOWS的DDE(Dynamic Data Exchange)动态数据交换，在微处理器模拟器上执行微处理器程序时，实现了虚拟材质的真实感操作。该系统使学生能够学习传统的微型计算机实验，如照明LED(发光二极管)的控制、步进电机控制和A/D(模拟/数字)转换器的数据采集。本系统的用户界面具有以下功能：1.当实验菜单页面启动时，自动加载为虚拟实验室实验开发的所有应用软件。通过在实验材料的每个窗口中按下一个“开始”按钮，自动加载和执行MPU程序。此外，我们开发了一个支持MPU编程的系统：点击MPU指令框中的一个链接，转到解释MPU指令的含义、状态数、机器周期数、标志操作等的选定页面。我们让已经经历过常规微型计算机实验的二年级学生尝试使用虚拟实验室，他们对该系统的反应几乎是积极的。需要进一步调查学习效果，以实现用虚拟实验室取代现有的实验室。根据实验菜单、实验内容描述和虚拟实验之间的软件链接，定期构建包含虚拟实验环境的超文本。

From the viewpoint of developing experimental subjects of electronics/computer engineering, we proposed virtual laboratory experiments on the computer screen. On the basis of DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) of MICROSOFT WINDOWS,the virtual materials realistically operate when microprocessor (MPU) programs are executed with the MPU simulator. The present system enables students to learn conventional microcomputer experiments, for example, control of lighting LEDs (Light Emitting Diode), stepper motor control and the data acquisition with A/D (Analog/Digital) converters. User interface of the present system has the following capabilities :1. Automatic loading of all of the application software developed for the virtual laboratory experiments when the menu page of experiments is started.2. Automatic loading and executing of MPU programs by depression of a "start" button in every window of experimental materials.In addition, we developed a supporting system for MPU programming : clicking on a link of the MPU instruction box moves you to the selected page explaining the meaning of the MPU instruction, the number of states, the number of machine cycles, flag operations etc. We let the second year students who had already experienced the conventional microcomputer experiments try using the virtual laboratory ; their reaction to the system was almost positive.Further investigations on efficacy of learning are needed so as to realize the replacement of existing laboratory experiments with the virtual laboratory. According to software linking between the experiment menu, description of experimental contents and the virtual experiments, we will regularly construct a hyper text including the virtual experiment environments.