Self-paced Online Programming Instruction

The Teach Yourself Programming site was originally used to teach students basic programming skills in a WPI summer program. This project has reconstructed and redesigned it to fit essential distance learning principles in the hopes of encouraging its repurposing

Do Robots Dream of Virtual Sheep: Rediscovering the "Karel the Robot" Paradigm for the "Plug&Play Generation"

We introduce ”C-Sheep”, an educational system designed to teach students the fundamentals of computer programming in a novel and exciting way. Recent studies suggest that computer science education is fast approaching a crisis - application numbers for degree courses in the area of computer programming are down, and potential candidates are put off the subject which they do not fully understand. We address this problem with our system by providing the visually rich virtual environment of ”The Meadow”, where the user writes programs to control the behaviour of a sheep using our ”CSheep” programming language. This combination of the ”Karel the Robot” paradigm with modern 3D computer graphics techniques, more commonly found in computer games, aims to help students to realise that computer programming can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience and intends to help educators with the teaching of computer science fundamentals. Our mini-language-like system for computer science education uses a state of the art rendering engine offering features more commonly found in entertainment systems. The scope of the mini-language is designed to fit in with the curriculum for the first term of an introductory computer program ming course (using the C programming language)

MOTIVATING BUSINESS MAJOR STUDENTS TO LEARN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING – A CASE STUDY

Learning to program is viewed as difficult by many students. How to motivate and engage business major students to learn programming is challenging. In this paper, we report our attempt to teach business students programming. In our teaching method, first we orient students with the business and managerial aspect of programming by posing six original questions. By discussing these six questions, students gain appreciation of the high level responsibility of participating, contributing, assessing, and managing Information Systems (IS) as business professionals. Second, we adopt a Let Us Do It Together approach to deliver hands on labs to teach the technical aspect of programming. Inspired by the constructivism learning theory and the learning by doing and experimentation idea, our Let Us Do It Together approach mitigates students’ anxiety and fear of programming. Overall, our teaching approach seems to enhance students’ interest in programming

An exploration of the role of visual programming tools in the development of young children’s computational thinking

Programming tools are being used in education to teach computer science to children as young as 5 years old. This research aims to explore young children’s approaches to programming in two tools with contrasting programming interfaces, ScratchJr and Lightbot, and considers the impact of programming approaches on developing computational thinking. A study was conducted using two versions of a Lightbot-style game, either using a ScratchJr-like or Lightbot style programming interface. A test of non-verbal reasoning was used to perform a matched assignment of 40, 6 and 7-year-olds to the two conditions. Each child then played their version of the game for 30 minutes. The results showed that both groups had similar overall performance, but as expected, the children using the ScratchJr-like interface performed more program manipulation or ‘tinkering’. The most interesting finding was that non-verbal reasoning was a predictor of program manipulation, but only for the ScratchJr-like condition. Children approached the ScratchJr-like program differently depending on prior ability. More research is required to establish how children use programming tools and how these approaches influence computational thinking

Hammer: an Android based application for end-user industrial robot programming

This paper presents a novel tablet based end-user interface for industrial robot programming (called Hammer). This application makes easier to program tasks for industrial robots like polishing, milling or grinding. It is based on the Scratch programming language, but specifically design and created for Android OS. It is a visual programming concept that allows non-skilled programmer operators to create programs. The application also allows to monitor the tasks while it is being executed by overlapping real time information through augmented reality. The application includes a teach pendant screen that can be customized according to the operator needs at every moment

Towards a debugging tutor for object-oriented environments

Programming has provided a rich domain for Artificial Intelligence in Education and many systems have been developed to advise students about the bugs in their programs, either during program development or post-hoc. Surprisingly few systems have been developed specifically to teach debugging. Learning environment builders have assumed that either the student will be taught these elsewhere or thatthey will be learnt piecemeal without explicit advice.This paper reports on two experiments on Java debugging strategy by novice programmers and discusses their implications for the design of a debugging tutor for Java that pays particular attention to how students use the variety of program representations available. The experimental results are in agreement with research in the area that suggests that good debugging performance is associated with a balanced use ofthe available representations and a sophisticated use of the debugging step facility which enables programmers to detect and obtain information from critical momentsin the execution of the program. A balanced use of the available representations seemsto be fostered by providing representations with a higher degree of dynamic linkingas well as by explicit instruction about the representation formalism employed in the program visualisations

Teaching agents to learn: from user study to implementation

Graphical user interfaces have helped center computer use on viewing and editing, rather than on programming. Yet the need for end-user programming continues to grow. Software developers have responded to the demand with a barrage of customizable applications and operating systems. But the learning curve associated with a high level of customizability-even in GUI-based operating systems-often prevents users from easily modifying their software. Ironically, the question has become, "What is the easiest way for end users to program?" Perhaps the best way to customize a program, given current interface and software design, is for users to annotate tasks-verbally or via the keyboard-as they are executing them. Experiments have shown that users can "teach" a computer most easily by demonstrating a desired behavior. But the teaching approach raises new questions about how the system, as a learning machine, will correlate, generalize, and disambiguate a user's instructions. To understand how best to create a system that can learn, the authors conducted an experiment in which users attempt to train an intelligent agent to edit a bibliography. Armed with the results of these experiments, the authors implemented an interactive machine learning system, which they call Configurable Instructible Machine Architecture. Designed to acquire behavior concepts from few examples, Cima keeps users informed and allows them to influence the course of learning. Programming by demonstration reduces boring, repetitive work. Perhaps the most important lesson the authors learned is the value of involving users in the design process. By testing and critiquing their design ideas, users keep the designers focused on their objective: agents that make computer-based work more productive and more enjoyable