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Given the digital electronics industry's workforce shortage, fostering interest in hardware computing becomes imperative. Our NSF IUSE-funded project aims to address this by offering an inclusive, hands-on curriculum that involves FPGAs, IoT boards, and collaborative projects. Employing a DBR methodology, we systematically refine it through iterative analysis, design, development, and implementation. We have conducted three implementations, each informing the improvement of the curriculum with empirical evidence. 

Fostering high school students' interest in hardware computing is crucial due to the industry's workforce shortage. Our study aimed to cultivate interest through an inclusive, hands-on curriculum integrating circuit simulations, FPGAs, and collaborative projects. We conducted a six-week seminar with six senior high school students, assessing their interest development through surveys and focus groups. Results showed a transition from triggered situational interest to a more sustained form. 

Gamification increases engagement in education, but balancing competition and collaboration is crucial. Educators can establish clear rules, define different rewards, and create diverse teams to achieve a balance. This study used hardware boards to gamify instruction on binary numbers and logic gates, with teams earning points for tasks and working together on a group challenge. Students were highly engaged but had some anxiety about time limits. All teams were engaged, and cooperation was successful. 

Electronic devices have become indispensable in everyone’s life and so the computer hardware industry is demanding skilled professionals to design and physically implement devices to satisfy the market. However, misconceptions surrounding manufacturing jobs and the increasing initiatives to motivate students with engineering majors to focus on software-related topics such as artificial intelligence and blockchain are hindering students’ interest in hardware computing. Our project, funded by the NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, addresses the need to engage more students in explorations (and, eventually, design) of computer hardware by developing a set of games played on an easy-to-use hardware platform to understand and implement the fundamental concepts that are essential to modern computing systems (Figure 1). To encourage flexible and broad adoption, the games are conceived as standalone units within a curriculum design that leverages equitable pedagogical practices, experiential learning, and inquiry-based learning to cultivate engineering identity and persistence using situational interest and self-efficacy theories. We aim to offer the curriculum as an elective undergraduate course for all engineering majors at two US institutions and also research and evaluate the feasibility of implementing it as a summer program with high school students. Each module in the curriculum is divided into 5 phases: activation of prior knowledge, mini-lesson, gameplay, student-led work time, and debriefing. The games support collaboration rather than competition, and each lesson is tagged with equity spotlights, including Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (CSP) principles. Finally, informed by the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, each lesson includes a teacher implementation guide and teacher educative materials to facilitate implementation (Figure 2). We have tested the first two games in the curriculum for usability and feasibility with a group of high school students. The topics of these games include binary arithmetic and Boolean logic gates. Participants were challenged to solve tasks using the hardware tools at their disposal. This usability and feasibility testing study provided us with important design and implementation implications.