Development, implementation and evaluation of an interactive multimedia instructional model : A teaching and learning programming approach

This study sought to explore the outcomes from the use of a dynamic interactive visualisation tool among novice programmers in an introductory computer programming course. The proposed model, Dynamic Interactive Visualisation Tool in Teaching C (DIVTIC), was designed to use multimedia and visual imagery to provide learners with a step-by-step representation of program execution in the C language as a means of enhancing their understanding of programming structures and concepts. DIVTIC was designed to support constructivist learning principles and combined collaborative and visualisation learning strategies with use of the Internet and the World Wide Web to support the learning of programming. The feasibility and effectiveness of DIVTIC was explored among a cohort of 100 undergraduate engineering students, 50 in a control group and another 50 in an experimental group, studying an introductory programming course at Suranaree University of Technology (SUT) in Thailand, The study found that the use of DIVTIC was a successful complement to conventional teaching. The results clearly demonstrated the advantage of using DIVTIC among low achieving students. The students from this level in the experimental group significantly outscored their counterparts in the control group in the final test suggesting that DIVTIC was an important element in their learning process. Interestingly, these low achieving students used DIVTIC most and achieved highest grades. However, lower achieving students appeared to learn from simply viewing the animations rather than being highly interactive and stopping and starting them consistently. The study found that the visualisation process implemented in DIVTIC could be of considerable assistance to a particular group of students, those with a low GPA, in developing their understanding of difficult programming concepts

Development and Evaluation of Interactive Courseware for Visualization of Graph Data Structure and Algorithms

The primary goal of this dissertation was to develop and pilot test interactive, multimedia courseware which would facilitate learning the abstract structures, operations, and concepts associated with graph and network data structures in Computer Science. Learning objectives and prerequisites are presented in an introduction section of the courseware and a variety of learning activities are provided including tutorials, animated demonstrations, interactive laboratory sessions, and self-tests. Courseware development incorporated principles and practices from software engineering, instructional design, and cognitive learning theories. Implementation utilized an easy-to-use authoring tool, NeoBook Professional (1994), to create the overall framework and the user interfaces, and Microsoft QuickBASIC 4.5 (1990) to program the interactive animated demonstrations and laboratory exercises. A major emphasis of the courseware is the use of simple interactive, animated displays to demonstrate the step-by-step operation of graph and network algorithms such as depth-first traversal, breadth-first traversal, shortest path, minimum sparring tree and topological ordering

Webquests: Improving military training through constructivism and the web

The purpose of this project was for members of the United States Marine Corps to leverage the benefits of inquiry based learning in the form of WebQuests. By creating and implementing WebQuests to meet training needs at the small unit level, non commissioned officers can take advantage of the resources of the World Wide Web in a timely and effective manner. To this end, a course of computer-based training was designed, developed, tested, implemented, and evaluated using the ADDIE instructional design model

A service oriented architecture to provide data mining services for non-expert data miners

In today's competitive market, companies need to use discovery knowledge techniques to make better, more informed decisions. But these techniques are out of the reach of most users as the knowledge discovery process requires an incredible amount of expertise. Additionally, business intelligence vendors are moving their systems to the cloud in order to provide services which offer companies cost-savings, better performance and faster access to new applications. This work joins both facets. It describes a data mining service addressed to non-expert data miners which can be delivered as Software-as-a-Service. Its main advantage is that by simply indicating where the data file is, the service itself is able to perform all the process. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Instructional and Technological Design of E-Learning Courses

Diseño de un modelo tecnológico e instruccional para impartir cursos e-learning

A distributed environment for developing, teaching, and learning algorithmic concepts

Thesis (S.B. and M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-80).by Nicholas J. Tornow.S.B.and M.Eng

The Linux operating system: An introduction

Linux is a Unix-like operating system for Intel 386/486/Pentium based IBM-PCs and compatibles. The kernel of this operating system was written from scratch by Linus Torvalds and, although copyrighted by the author, may be freely distributed. A world-wide group has collaborated in developing Linux on the Internet. Linux can run the powerful set of compilers and programming tools of the Free Software Foundation, and XFree86, a port of the X Window System from MIT. Most capabilities associated with high performance workstations, such as networking, shared file systems, electronic mail, TeX, LaTeX, etc. are freely available for Linux. It can thus transform cheap IBM-PC compatible machines into Unix workstations with considerable capabilities. The author explains how Linux may be obtained, installed and networked. He also describes some interesting applications for Linux that are freely available. The enormous consumer market for IBM-PC compatible machines continually drives down prices of CPU chips, memory, hard disks, CDROMs, etc. Linux can convert such machines into powerful workstations that can be used for teaching, research and software development. For professionals who use Unix based workstations at work, Linux permits virtually identical working environments on their personal home machines. For cost conscious educational institutions Linux can create world-class computing environments from cheap, easily maintained, PC clones. Finally, for university students, it provides an essentially cost-free path away from DOS into the world of Unix and X Windows