Blue - A Language for Teaching Object-Oriented Programming

Teaching object-oriented programming has clearly become an important part of computer science education. We agree with many others that the best place to teach it is in the CS1 introductory course. Many problems with this have been reported in the literature. These mainly result from inadequate languages and environments. Blue is a new language and integrated programming environment, currently under development explicitly for object-oriented teaching. We expect clear advantages from the use of Blue for first year teaching compared to using other available languages. This paper describes the design principles on which the language was based and the most important aspects of the language itself

Towards a narrative-oriented framework for designing mathematical learning

This paper proposes a narrative-oriented approach to the design of educational activities, as well as a CSCL system to support them, in the context of learning mathematics. Both Mathematics and interface design seem unrelated to narrative. Mathematical language, as we know it, is devoid of time and person. Computer interfaces are static and non-linear. Yet, as Bruner (1986; 1990) and others show, narrative is a powerful cognitive and epistemological tool. The questions we wish to explore are - - If, and how, can mathematical meaning be expressed in narrative forms - without compromising rigour? - What are the narrative aspects of user interface? How can interface design be guided by notions of narrative? - How can we harness the power of narrative in teaching mathematics, in a CSCL environment? We begin by giving a brief account of the use of narrative in educational theory. We will describe the environment and tools used by the WebLabs project, and report on one of our experiments. We will then describe our narrative-oriented framework, by using it to analyze both the environment and the experiment described

A Checkout Language for Future Space Vehicles

To support an increased emphasis on automated checkout of future space vehicles, a procedureoriented computer language is required. This language needs to be more user-oriented and needs to have a more complete set of capabilities than existing languages. Such a language, named TOTAL, was developed under contract to NASAKSC. This paper presents an overall view of the language in terms of its major characteristics as derived from the basic design objectives

Professionally-Oriented Communicative Language Teaching Approach by the Design of a Computer Assisted ESP Course: Analysis of Results

Professionally-Oriented Communicative Language Teaching is an effective approach widely recognized among scientists and teachers which involves learners in authentic environment and communication and helps develop communicative competence of non-native speakers studying English for specific purposes (ESP). With the increase of Computer Assisted Language Learning teachers are constantly facing challenges to combine information technology with the Professionally-Oriented Communicative Language Teaching approach, and to develop and design relevant communicative activities which result in non-native speakers' of English improvement in communicative competence. The attempt to integrate computer assisted language environments and professionally oriented communicative language teaching results in the development of E-learning ESP courses in the Modular Object Oriented Developmental Learning Environment, based on the module "Electric systems and networks". The subjects of the study were sixty students, including students from Vietnam and the Czech Republic studying ESP at the Institute of Power Engineering of Tomsk Polytechnic University. The data was collected over a period of two years from the results of students' performance and a questionnaire survey concerning feedback on students' communicative language activities conducted during the course. The results indicate variations in the attitude of students from different countries to the developed communication activities. As the students state, however, the e-learning ESP course provides communicative situations similar to real ones and gives an opportunity to use the acquired knowledge in practical, professional, and research activity

Professionally-Oriented Communicative Language Teaching Approach by the Design of a Computer Assisted ESP Course: Analysis of Results

Professionally-Oriented Communicative Language Teaching is an effective approach widely recognized among scientists and teachers which involves learners in authentic environment and communication and helps develop communicative competence of non-native speakers studying English for specific purposes (ESP). With the increase of Computer Assisted Language Learning teachers are constantly facing challenges to combine information technology with the Professionally-Oriented Communicative Language Teaching approach, and to develop and design relevant communicative activities which result in non-native speakers' of English improvement in communicative competence. The attempt to integrate computer assisted language environments and professionally oriented communicative language teaching results in the development of E-learning ESP courses in the Modular Object Oriented Developmental Learning Environment, based on the module "Electric systems and networks". The subjects of the study were sixty students, including students from Vietnam and the Czech Republic studying ESP at the Institute of Power Engineering of Tomsk Polytechnic University. The data was collected over a period of two years from the results of students' performance and a questionnaire survey concerning feedback on students' communicative language activities conducted during the course. The results indicate variations in the attitude of students from different countries to the developed communication activities. As the students state, however, the e-learning ESP course provides communicative situations similar to real ones and gives an opportunity to use the acquired knowledge in practical, professional, and research activity

STICAP: A linear circuit analysis program with stiff systems capability. Volume 1: Theory manual

STICAP (Stiff Circuit Analysis Program) is a FORTRAN 4 computer program written for the CDC-6400-6600 computer series and SCOPE 3.0 operating system. It provides the circuit analyst a tool for automatically computing the transient responses and frequency responses of large linear time invariant networks, both stiff and nonstiff (algorithms and numerical integration techniques are described). The circuit description and user's program input language is engineer-oriented, making simple the task of using the program. Engineering theories underlying STICAP are examined. A user's manual is included which explains user interaction with the program and gives results of typical circuit design applications. Also, the program structure from a systems programmer's viewpoint is depicted and flow charts and other software documentation are given

Design of object-oriented debugger model by using unified modeling language.

Debugging on computer program is a complex cognitive activity. Although it is complex, it’s still one of the popular issues in computer programming task. It is a difficult task, which is to understand what the error is and how to solve such error? In computer programming the difficulty is to understand the Object-Oriented programming concept together with the programming logic. If the programming logic is incorrect, the program codes will have such error named as logic error and can caused highly maintenance cost. Logic error is a bug in a program that causes it to operate incorrectly, without terminating or crashing the program.It will produce unintended output or other behavior than what we are expecting. Method that use to develop a propose model Object Oriented Debugger is Unified Modeling Language (UML). It is the best choice model and suitable to design the Object Oriented Debugger which will be developed in an object oriented programming environment. The model will provide an ability to capture the characteristics of a system by using notations in the process of designing and implementing the system. The model of Object Oriented Debugger has been successfully implemented. This model has been developed using Unified Approach methodology, which consists of two methods such as Object-Oriented Analysis (OOA) and Object-Oriented Design (OOD). The model developed is to capture the structure and behavior of the Object Oriented Debugger by using the UML diagram. The model also can ease the readability of the documentation for the maintenance purposes. The design of the Object Oriented Debugger Model has been developed using the UML notation. It’s consisting of two parts that are object-oriented analysis and object-oriented design. All the developing and designing are based on the model in UML