This paper presents a significant advance in a reactive blended learning methodology applied to an introductory control engineering course. This proposal was based on the inclusion of a reactive element (a fuzzy-logic-based controller) designed to regulate the workload for each student according to his/her activity and performance. The contribution of this proposal stands on the inclusion of elements related to motivational factors in the students. Student motivation has been widely identified as a key factor for the academic success of every teaching-learning activity.

Simulators are widely used to teach instruction level parallelism (ILP) topics. A simulator called SIMDE, which combines the superscalar and very long instruction word (VLIW) approaches to ILP processors in a single environment, has been developed. SIMDE has been validated and improved using feedback from students during two academic years. Although the simulator is a valuable tool in and of itself, this paper goes one step beyond by using SIMDE with an educational methodology based on constructivism and collaborative learning. This methodology has been applied in a computer architecture course that uses the Moodle platform as a framework for collaboration between students and teachers