The CU Online Handbook shares some of the great things faculty are doing in their online courses across the university. The CU Online Handbook is also available online as an e-book. This is the 2nd edition of the CU Online Handbook (Lowenthal, Thomas, Thai & Yuhnke, 2009). Themes throughout this edition of The CU Online Handbook focus on how faculty can connect and build relationships with students and how technology can help in this process. Whether teaching online for years or are just beginning, this edition of The CU Online Handbook will help faculty improve the quality of the online courses they design, develop, and teach.

The class of CIVE230: Engineering and Sustainable Development have been at it again, learning remotely in Spring 2021. This is the second COVID-19 edition of the course!The course introduces sustainability on two levels: qualitative concepts and background information is covered; and quantitative models which emphasize core engineering methods are applied to sustainability problems. Quantitative methods are derived and applied to air quality, water quality, energy and solid waste. Attention is given to sustainable urban systems, as they apply to both developed and developing countries. Sustainability concepts covering the triple bottom line are also presented, and their applicability to sustainable cities are demonstrated. Students in the course were tasked with making a contribution to an e-book. They were creative and innovative in applying course concepts to cities of their choice and exploring sustainability challenges and innovations. Their sustainability project encouraged them to explore sustainable infrastructure, solutions and technologies in Canada and globally to generate an enriched learning experience and to tie ideas to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges (CEGC).

Learning about sustainability requires systems-thinking and a curiosity to explore. In the COVID-19 edition of a sustainability course, there were many chances to create new learning opportunities not only from the course content, but also from the world around us, the media and news, and from each other.Students in the course CIVE230: Engineering and Sustainable Development were tasked with making a contribution to sustainability efforts. They have been hard at work throughout the term to share a sustainability idea that were compiled in an e-book “The Sustainability Contribution Project” which showcases their ideas that cover all course topics as they apply to cities around the world. This activity encouraged students to explore sustainable cities, infrastructure, solutions and technologies globally to generate an enriched learning experience and create an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning. Together, they co-created content.This e-book serves as a contribution by the class for the class, and for the wider engineering education community. I encourage you to have a look through. 

This e-book aims to illustrate the basics of how a computer works, focusing on how a program written in a high-level language ends up being physically executed on a Central Processing Unit (CPU). The e-book is intended to be used in the context of an introductory computer science course at high school or undergraduate level.

The e-book starts with a concise explanation of the fundamental architecture shared by a wide variety of modern "computers", such as desktop computers, mobile phones, or car control units. This is followed by an explanation of the essential elements of the structure of any CPU, and the machine (assembly) language that it can execute.

This e-book is built around the Educational CPU Visual Simulator (CPUVSIM), another OER available through OER Commons. The e-book is a dynamic document because the simulator is seamlessly integrated with the proposed exercises and explanations: by clicking on the images or the 'Show solution' buttons, the CPUVSIM comes to life, loading the content of the figure or the solution for the specific exercise into memory. This allows users to experiment directly with the programming exercises presented in the book.

The associated CPUVSIM allows users to visualize with detailed animations the execution of assembly language code. Its main goal is to support novices in understanding the behavior of the key components of a CPU, focusing on how code written in high-level languages is actually executed on the hardware of a computer.
It supports a simplified but representative assembly language of 16 (Data Transfer, Control Flow, Arithmetic-Logic) instructions, with immediate and direct addressing modalities. Instructions and numeric data can be inserted and edited directly in RAM. It is possible to define “labels” to be used as parameters in jump instructions, or as variable identifiers. The speed and level of details of the animations can be controlled by the users. At any time, it is possible to switch between symbolic and binary representations.