Abstract
Computer architecture is an important subject for informatics and electrical engineering courses. However, students display some difficulties in this subject, mainly due to the lack of educational tools that are intuitive, versatile and graphical. Existing tools are not adequate enough or are very specific. In this paper, an educational MIPS simulator, DrMIPS, is described. This tool simulates the execution of an assembly program on the CPU and displays the datapath graphically. Registers, data memory and assembled code are also displayed and a "performance mode" is also provided. Both unicycle and pipeline implementations are supported and the CPUs and their instruction sets are configurable. The tool is currently available for PCs and Android tablets, and is fairly intuitive and versatile on both platforms.

Abstract
The 2019/2020 school year will always be remembered for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time in recent history, countries closed schools and forced instructors and students to quickly adjust to online classes. This sudden and forced shift to a method of teaching that was completely different from what we were used to presented several challenges and opportunities on a pedagogical level. In this paper we describe our experience as instructors in a course on microprocessor programming in the Master's Degree in Computer Science and Computing Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. Our approach included changes to the assessment plan, which became more distributed, and improvements in communication between students and instructors through the use of Slack. We found that the changes introduced were not only very well received by students, but also resulted in the best exam attendance and average final grade in the last 10 years of the course's history.

Abstract
Assessment is an important part of the educational process, playing a crucial role in student learning. The increase in the number of students in higher education has placed extreme pressure on assessment practices, often leading to a teacher having hundreds of assignments to correct, not only giving feedback too late, but also low quality feedback, as it is humanly impossible to correct all these assessments by giving quality feedback in such a short time. Due to the social confinement caused by the pandemic of COVID-19, there was the need to change the evaluation method initially associated with a thin exam, to a continuous evaluation method based on multiple weekly assignments. In order to deal with this situation, we developed AOCO, the first automatic correction tool for the ARMv8 AArch64 assembly language. This work presents the AOCO tool, as well as the results of the evaluation of a first use with students.

Abstract
The 2020/2021 academic year started full of uncertainties for new students of higher education in Portugal. The restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the fears of a new lockdown, all coupled with the well-known challenges that a university student faces in his first year, made this year a particularly challenging year in terms of the students' integration. In this paper, we present how the mentoring programme of the Integrated Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto was adapted to help the integration of first-year students in the university environment under the pandemic.

Abstract
Computer architecture is a prevalent topic of study in Informatics and Electrical Engineering courses, though students’ overall grasp of this subject’s concepts is many times hampered, mainly due to the lack of educational tools that can intuitively represent the internal behaviour of a CPU. With the evolution of the ARM architecture and its adoption in higher education institutions, the demand for this sort of tool has increased. Educational tools, specifically developed for the ARMv8 processor, are scarce and inadequate for what is necessary in an academic context. In order to contribute towards solving this problem, eduARM, a practical and interactive web platform that simulates how a ARMv8 CPU functions, was developed and is presented through this paper. Since this tool’s main purpose is to aid computer architecture students, contributing to an improvement in their learning experience, it comprises varied concepts of computer architecture and organization in a simple and intuitive manner, such as the internal structure of a CPU, in both its unicycle and pipelined versions, and the effects of executing a set of instructions. As to better understand its value, the developed tool was then validated through a case study with the participation of computer architecture students. Copyright © 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Abstract