Transitioning a Microcontroller Course from Assembly Language to C

This paper describes improvements made to an integrated lecture and laboratory course dealing with microcontrollers, taught in the Engineering Technology Department, at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR).This course initially used the Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller, but currently uses the Motorola MC9S12DP256B microcontroller.The course was previously taught using assembly language, but has just been updated so that students now program using C. The issues related to upgrading a course such as this from assembly language to C are addressed in this paper.