Session S1C 0-7803-6424-4/00/$10.00 © 2000 IEEE October 18 - 21, 2000 Kansas City, MO 30 th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S1C-12 HARDWARE DISSECTION IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AS A TOOL TO IMPROVE TEAMWORK María Feldgen 1 and Osvaldo Clúa 2 1 Maria Feldgen, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ingeniería, P. Colón 850, (1063) Bs As, Argentina mfeldgen@ieee.org 2 Osvaldo Clúa, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ingeniería, P. Colón 850, (1063) Bs As, Argentina oclua@ieee.org Abstract  In our subject: "File Organization and Processing", a classical Computer Science subject, we decided to introduce a floppy disk drive hardware dissection in order to motivate students with a different type of work, a true engineer’s work as it is perceived by society. We asked teams to disassemble, reassemble, explain the working principles, compare, and write an assembly- disassembly manual of the drive. In this paper we present our experiences and our outcomes. We found that dissection is a motivating task that not only worked as desired, increasing the retention, but also improved the team productivity. Each team managed to build an adequate environment to develop its own style of work. The mixed nature of the requested work, with tactile, intellectual, research, analysis and organizational requirements was addressed to each member’s personal style and allowed them to find a common way of working, subordinating their personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole. Index Terms  Dissection, retention, software design, teamwork. I. INTRODUCTION Computer Science is seldom related to hands-on activities. It is more related to intellectual, individual and intangible work, where the greatest physical involvement is typing a program or data. When students are grouped in teams for out-of-class assignments, these features of computer work are considered in the way teams are formed and tasks are divided within the team members. Finding the right task for an out-of-class assignment means motivating the students to put “hands at work”. Software is intangible and its design details and complexity are unobservable for the end user. Thus, software is not evaluated by its building process complexity or intrinsic quality, fault tolerant design or maintainability. It is evaluated by its interface or by its processing power. Design and programming are not as socially accepted as similar tasks are in others engineering fields. So they are hardly motivating tasks for our students. Software design subjects based on open-ended problems are specially suited for using active learning techniques [1], but teaching students the principles of top- down design is not sufficient to enable them to practice top- down design. Software design is a creative process requiring insight and flair on the part of the designer. It can be characterized as a problem solving process which is iterative and not linear[2]. From our experience [3], we learned that students must be actively involved in the design process, so we have to expose them to a more authentic context for learning. But mere exposure does not guarantee that students will develop an expertise skill [4] and that it will persist past the current course. Expertise development requires specific practice, so students must learn and practice effective problem solving strategies [5] [6] and it is also recognized that engineering students need to learn teaming and interacting skills as a part of their education [7]. In order to reach this goal, it becomes necessary to build a cooperative learning environment, with effective base groups, building a sense of community, giving them the right task and making them accountable[8]. Teaching a large class with 130 to 200 students effectively is hard work, but it is possible by making the necessary logistical arrangements in advance, providing plenty of active learning experiences in the classroom and taking full advantage of the power of teams [9]. In this paper we summarize our experiences and outcomes in using dissection to develop the students’ ability with open-ended problem solving, design using multi-disciplinary content, teamwork skills and ability to communicate effectively. II. DISSECTION AS A RETENTION TOOL It was not easy to find the right task for our students’ out-of- class assignments that would make them apply systems’ design and program specification techniques. Their only previous experience was to program single programs, so students in a team parceled out the work (programs) and stapled the individual products together, without integration. Teams worked in class as expected, but the same design methods were not used in the out-of-class projects. Failures were conflictive and desertion was high. Our first diagnosis was lack of motivation. We attended a dissection workshop at FIE 98 in Tempe, AZ. (A Hands-on Discussion of Dissection, Session F2E, A. Agogino et al) where we learned dissection as an innovative student