From Logic Puzzles to Logic Gates – Combining Fun and Practice in Teaching Introduction to Computer Science

Introduction to Computer Science is a foundation course in undergraduate programs in computer and computational sciences. It covers wide spectrum of topics in hardware and software systems, including evolution of computer architecture and its basic components, numbers and operations, binary and hexadecimal numeral systems, data representation as bit patterns, logic gates, etc. The course provides not only with the overview of the field, but also contributes to the development of general problem solving skill and prepares students for subsequent programming disciplines. We prioritize careful selection of problems and exercises in the teaching of Introduction to Computer Science to freshmen students in the first semester of their studies. In the current paper the approach is applied to the module of logic gates. We show that puzzles taken from the text “The Lady or the Tiger?: and Other Logic Puzzles, Including a Mathematical Novel that Features Godel’s Great Discovery” by Raymond Smullyan (Times Books, New York, 1982) can be used for introducing the concepts of logic truth-tables, gates and circuits, and highlighting their main properties. As pointed by the author, these puzzles are tightly related to the fundamental theory and are of equal interest to logicians, mathematicians and computer scientists. We implement the gate-based solutions of selected puzzles and categorize them according to teaching activities, such as in-class exercises, home tasks and course projects. Finally, we outline the ties between different sections of the course due to the adopted puzzle format and discuss its impact on students’ motivation and productivity.