2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Filling in the Missing Piece: Integrating Storage into CompOrg Courses

Presented at Computers in Education Division (COED) Track 3.A

The Computer Organization (CompOrg) course is fundamental for students to learn how different computer components work as a whole. Different institutions may cover different topics, but they usually share similar scopes, which include C programming, binary representation, assembly, stack/heap, overflow, virtual memory, memory management, digital logic, and pipelining. On the other hand, storage devices are vital to computer systems. The storage device topic is designated a mandatory CompOrg topic in the latest Computer Science Curricula 2023, published in early 2024; still, it is usually overlooked by CompOrg courses, according to our survey of existing course offerings spanning 29 reputable US universities.

To fill in the missing piece in CompOrg, we designed a new programming assignment, SSDLab, for our CompOrg course. SSDLab provides students with the opportunity to implement Flash Translation Layer (FTL), a key component of the Solid State Drive (SSD) firmware. Furthermore, we also provide written assignments, named StorageWrit, for students to learn how storage latencies are calculated given a set of storage devices and file characteristics, including storage type, latency, file size, etc. The goal is for students to learn the concept of modern storage organization and write better code for higher I/O throughput in the era of big data by understanding and identifying possible I/O bottlenecks in storage devices. We evaluated student performance by creating exam questions corresponding to the assignments and finding the correlation between assignments and exam questions. We then ask for student feedback on their experiences and what they have learned with SSDLab. Our results show that the students learned the new topic with similar effectiveness as those traditional topics in our course with our programming and written assignments. Students who finished SSDLab showed 32% higher grades in the corresponding exam question, and students enjoyed the hands-on experiences brought by SSDLab despite its relative difficulty. We will open-source the assignments after acceptance.

Authors

Xiangqun Zhang Syracuse University [biography]

Xiangqun is a fifth-year Ph.D. student majoring in Computer & Information Science & Engineering. His research interests mostly focus on solid-state drives and their applications in modern use cases, but he is also passionate about teaching and pedagogy methods. He hopes his teaching could inspire more students to become researchers in the computer science field.
Dr. Ziyang Jiao Syracuse University [biography]

Dr. Jiao receives his Ph.D. in Computer & Information Science & Engineering from Syracuse University. His research focuses on file and storage systems, solid-state drives (SSDs), flash memory, and sustainable computing. His work is driven by a research philosophy that seeks to imbue minimal yet meaningful knowledge into various layers of the I/O stack, thereby enabling a more efficient, synergistic, and adaptive storage ecosystem.
Dr. Farzana Rahman Syracuse University [biography]

Dr. Rahman, an Associate Professor of Teaching in the EECS department of Syracuse University. Dr. Rahman has a strong history of being an excellent educator who is loved by undergraduate and graduate students of EECS. In recognition of her outstanding teaching performance and inclusive mentoring, she was awarded Syracuse University Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Program’s Teaching Recognition Award in 2024, and College Educator of the Year award by Technology Alliance of Central New York in 2023. Central to her teaching approach is an active-learning style, which pairs hands-on programming exercises with challenging projects that demand students to cultivate skill in problem solving, debugging and software engineering in general. She is dedicated towards creating equitable education and learning experiences for all students by providing educational opportunities that are inclusive to--and supportive of-- women, genderqueer, non-binary, and underrepresented and minority (URM) students.

As a diversity spokesperson of the department, Dr. Rahman spearheads various DEIA initiatives. One of her most impactful initiatives is Research Exposure on Socially Relevant Computing (RESORC), funded by Google Research, to increase both the exposure and visibility of undergraduate research at EECS. With more than 200 students participating in RESORC over the past 3 years, she has designed and facilitated multiple virtual workshops to help undergraduate students develop computing identity, research skills, practice teaching strategies, and explore research topics in computing and engineering domain.

Dr. Rahman’s research and mentoring initiatives has been supported by many funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, Google, NCWIT, Google TensorFlow, and American Association of Colleges and Universities to develop effective pedagogy in undergraduate computer science (CS) education. She is the winner of the NCWIT Extension Services (NCWIT ES-UP) award, ABI Systers PIO (Pass-It-On) award, Google ExploreCSR Award, and NCWIT educator award. She published numerous peer-reviewed articles in venues, including the Special Interest Group of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM SIGCSE), IEEE RESPECT, and IEEE Frontiers in Engineering Education, American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conference. She has received funding from different funding agencies research and mentoring initiatives directed toward developing effective pedagogy in undergraduate computer education. She holds a Ph.D in computer science and specializes in a broad area of pervasive health technologies, and computer science education.
Prof. Bryan Kim Syracuse University [biography]

Bryan S. Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University. His research interests center around building performant, reliable, and scalable memory and storage systems for data-intensive applications using emerging hardware technologies. His work has appeared in top computer systems venues such as FAST, ATC, OSDI, and EuroSys, and his research is supported through various projects, including the NSF CAREER award.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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