Interactive simulator for teaching-learning of page replacement algorithms in operating systems

Abstract

Topics considered difficult for university students taking some courses in computer sciences could cause them academic stress, mainly when for this kind of topic, there is little or no didactic material available to the instructor, that she could use as a teaching-learning tool. This kind of tool can help the student to learn or reinforce her knowledge on her own. In this work, we describe the proposal of a teaching-learning interactive tool for the course of operating systems, and it is about the implementation of a simulator to learn some pagereplacement algorithms in operating systems that allow the student to identify not only the replacement algorithm, but also the important elements associated with the functioning of these algorithms, like the dispatcher, the processes, the instructions and the clock. So far, a prototype of simulator that implements the pagereplacement algorithm, called aging, that uses Round Robin as a dispatcher algorithm has been built. With this kind of tool, we hope in the future, to contribute to the decrease of academic stress by facilitating the professor´s teaching process and to achieve meaningful learning.