USING ECLIPSE-BASED SOFTWARE TOOLS TO TEACH MODEL-BASED DESIGN METHODOLOGY IN A PROGRAMMING TOOLS COURSE AND AN EMBEDDED COMPUTER SYSTEMS COURSE

This paper presents our experience of introducing both eclipse-based tools and model-based design (MBD) methodology into a system-level Programming Tools course for senior electrical engineering and computer engineering students. Eclipse is an integrated software development environment from IBM. Eclipse-based development tools have been widely employed by software projects in both academy and industry. Many eclipse-based software tools support MBD, an emerging development methodology for creating complex embedded software. We introduce students to the MBD process in combination with eclipse-based tools. The goal is to equip engineering students with the knowledge of advanced system development method and software tools so that they are able to utilize the tools for the efficient and cost-effective development of embedded systems. Our preliminary observations show that this combination could help students understand advanced software development technologies in practice, and improve the efficiency of designing and implementing embedded software projects.