PROBLEMS and INTENDED SOLUTIONS in TEACHING PIC MICROCONTROLLER in EET PROGRAM

Microcontrollers have become an integral part in the areas of engineering and technology.These are being used in almost every application that requires a certain amount of intelligence.The application areas are expanded to industrial, medical, automotive, battery powered small devices and consumer electronics.This reinforces the essence of making sure that all engineering and technology students receive a basic understanding of microcontrollers.The students need to view it as a crucial hardware component.The industries are increasingly seeking graduates with appropriate background and training in microcontroller technology.Knowledge in this vital field will broaden the undergraduate experience of technology and significantly enhance the students' employment opportunities.Viewing the fact that there is and will be an ever-increasing demand for engineers and technologists in this field, Northwestern State University, at Natchitoches, Louisiana, introduced a one semester (3 credit-hour class and 1 credit-hour lab) course on Microcontrollers.In both our instruction and lab experiments we have selected the Microchip's PIC 16 & PIC18 microcontroller family devices, namely 16F84A, 16F54, 16F870 and 18F452 for obvious reasons.We have attempted to provide our graduates adequate knowledge to design, test and analyze basic microcontroller-based circuits using both assembly and high-level language programming.But it is neither sufficient nor in pace with our industry's latest state of development.Most notable reasons are the: nonavailability of (a) Text Book, (b) Experiment Book, and (c) Development Tools for both educators and students.Therefore, an educator must search here and there to complete and deliver each of his lessons adequately; thus, leaving the student feeling frustrated and unfulfilled in this course of study.This paper will intend to highlight difficulties and problems being faced in producing engineers & technologists who can be readily and respectfully absorbed in the careers as well as the plans and suggestions to overcome those problems.The course outline along with laboratory experiments will also be discussed.