Post-lockdown Education: an Overview of a Computer Architecture Discipline

Abstract

During two years of COVID-19 lockdown for Brazilian universities, new online teaching techniques showed us that the main problem with education is learning. If we compare the methods from one hundred years ago and now, we changed technologies, but we kept the same method to learn because we are humans, i.e., we need to socialize. It is necessary to understand reactions, live, and learn together in the same space, real or not. A disruptive approach to learning will likely be based on something other than a metaverse, but on a download to the brain, and it does not exist yet. However, how is this discussion related to computer architecture? Although we understand the concern about education methods and how wide it is, computer architecture is one of the bases of computer science and engineering. New methods that remove socialization in this new postlockdown educational environment can also partially remove the bases for a good computer scientist or engineer. Despite that, we can try a hybrid approach, and this report paper intents to present a post-lockdown experience about teaching and learning in a computer architecture class.