A Survey of Research in Microcontroller Education

Microcontrollers constitute a popular technology of our age. While a few decades ago, it seemed extremely difficult to teach non-electronic engineers how to program a single-chip computer system, nowadays, inexperienced designers share microcontroller-based prototypes over the Internet. The emergence of today's do-it-yourself (DIY) culture has introduced pervasiveness of this technology and rendered the development of embedded computing systems easier than ever before. This communication identifies two fundamental eras in the advancement of microcontroller programming and application development, and distinguishes the 'back then' with 'nowadays' trends and consequent risks in education. Then, attention is paid to the classification and progress in educational research over a span of twenty years, along with a prediction of the prospective direction in microcontroller education in the upcoming decade. In this paper, in the recognition of the growing interdisciplinary nature of microcontroller technology, the information summarized could serve as a reference guide for further research study in diverse disciplines.