there are many other concepts thatthe students will have to grasp before they can jump into writning drivers for LCDs, drivers for SPI devices, etc. It is beyond the scope of his course.
if they are "beyond the scope of his course" then he can provide the code, regardless of what board he uses. There is no need to use an antique in order to do this. Many of the Cygnal boards have 8 ports, so there is no need to use MMIO to deive the LCD etc.

Were I to teach a beginner course based on a Cygnal board, I would, for one, definitely provide the configure file.

Erik