  Delivering hands-on practice laboratories for introductory courses on
operating systems is a difficult task. One of the main sources of the
difficulty is the sheer size and complexity of the operating systems software.
Consequently, some of the solutions adopted in the literature to teach
operating systems laboratory consider smaller and simpler systems, generally
referred to as instructional operating systems. This work continues in the same
direction and is threefold. First, it considers a simpler hardware platform.
Second, it argues that a minimal operating system is a viable option for
delivering laboratories. Third, it presents a laboratory teaching platform,
whereby students build a minimal operating system for an embedded hardware
platform. The proposed platform is called MiniOS. An important aspect of MiniOS
is that it is sufficiently supported with additional technical and pedagogic
material. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach to teach
operating systems laboratories is illustrated through the experience of using
it to deliver laboratory projects in the Operating Systems course at the
University of Northern British Columbia. Finally, we discuss experimental
research in computing education and considered the qualitative results of this
work as part of a larger research endeavour.
