Abstract-A visual computer simulator, called "VisuSim", has
been developed and applied to real education for Computer
Science at Kagawa University. It is one of educational tools
associated with lectures on Computer Architecture and Assembly
Programming. The simulator is written in the pure Java
programming language, executed in several kinds of environment
(free for types of OS and CPU) and invoked in the applet mode as
well as in the stand-alone one. Typical usages of our simulator are
two-fold. Teachers employ our simulator, "VisuSim" to
demonstrate visually how a computer processes its program.
Students use the simulators in class or access our website,
download "VisuSim", and invoke applet-based "VisuSim" on
their browsers. After receiving feedback from users, we have
provided communication support facility as a new function of
"VisuSim". With such a communication facility, can send their
programs, ask questions on them to their classmates and the
classmates can test received programs with their "VisuSim" to
think together about the questions.
Index Terms-Educational tool, Collaborative learning, Visual
simulator, Java programming language, Computer literacy