Hands-On Introduction To Computer Science At The Freshman Level

This paper details the creation of a hands-on introduction course that reflects the dramatic growth and diversity in computer science. Our aim was to enable students to get an end-to-end perspective on computer system design by building one. We report on a two-year exercise in using the Arduino platform to build a series of hands-on projects. We have used these projects in two course instances, and have obtained detailed student feedback, which we analyze and present in this paper. The instructions, code and videos developed are available open-source.