Microcontrollers are widely used in agricultural production, processing, and research, yet few undergraduate agriculture students are exposed to these powerful embedded computing devices. One limitation in teaching microcontrollers has been the lack of physical devices (microcontrollers, sensors, and actuators) available for student use. To address this limitation, we compared novice agriculture students completing a hands-on microcontroller activity (n = 12) with students completing the same activity using a computer simulation (n = 11), on task performance, attitudes toward microcontrollers, and self-efficacy for constructing simple electronic circuits and programming microcontrollers. Students enrolled in an introductory agricultural systems course during fall 2025 were randomly assigned to groups. All students completed a common initial lesson introducing microcontrollers, their agricultural applications, basic circuit construction, and programming prior to the activity. For the activity, the hands-on group was provided with all necessary resources to construct, program, and operate their circuits, while students in the simulation group constructed, programmed, and simulated their circuits using TinkerCAD, a free online program. Because of the small group sizes, descriptive statistics and effect sizes were used to analyze and interpret the results. There was no difference between groups on task performance with all students in both groups scoring 100%. There were no practical differences in groups for attitudes (M _hands-on = 3.68, M _simulation = 3.64, Cohen’s d = 0.07) or self-efficacy for circuit construction (M _hands-on = 3.76, M _simulation = 3.71, Cohen’s d = 0.08). However, the mean for programming self-efficacy was slightly higher for the simulation group (M  = 3.60) than for the hands-on group (M = 3.34), with a Cohen’s d of 0.38. These results indicate the simulation activity was equivalent to or slightly more effective than the hands-on activity, providing a viable teaching option for introducing novice agriculture students to microcontroller use.