Teaching computer architecture as a hands-on engineering course to approximately 250 MIT students per semester requires a large, dedicated teaching staff. This Spring, a shortened version of the course will be deployed on edX to a potentially far larger cohort of students, without additional teaching staff. To better support students, we have deployed developmental versions of three learner-sourcing systems to as many as 500 students. These systems harvest and organize students' collective knowledge about debugging and optimizing solutions. We plan to deploy and study the next iteration of these systems on edX this Spring.

The interactive learning environment (ILE) is designed to combine the traditional resources of a textbook with the "hands-on" design experiences that are vital to a real understanding of basic engineering principles. The ILE builds on the technology developed for the World Wide Web to provide a learning environment that can be easily accessed from any browser. In addition to browseable text, Java-based computer-aided design (CAD) tools can be accessed through interactive figures embedded in the text, where students can investigate circuit behavior under the guidance of focused tutorials.