34,608 research outputs found
Instructional strategies and tactics for the design of introductory computer programming courses in high school
This article offers an examination of instructional strategies and tactics for the design of introductory computer programming courses in high school. We distinguish the Expert, Spiral and Reading approach as groups of instructional strategies that mainly differ in their general design plan to control students' processing load. In order, they emphasize topdown program design, incremental learning, and program modification and amplification. In contrast, tactics are specific design plans that prescribe methods to reach desired learning outcomes under given circumstances. Based on ACT* (Anderson, 1983) and relevant research, we distinguish between declarative and procedural instruction and present six tactics which can be used both to design courses and to evaluate strategies. Three tactics for declarative instruction involve concrete computer models, programming plans and design diagrams; three tactics for procedural instruction involve worked-out examples, practice of basic cognitive skills and task variation. In our evaluation of groups of instructional strategies, the Reading approach has been found to be superior to the Expert and Spiral approaches
Design as conversation with digital materials
This paper explores Donald Schön's concept of design as a conversation with materials, in the context of designing digital systems. It proposes material utterance as a central event in designing. A material utterance is a situated communication act that depends on the particularities of speaker, audience, material and genre.
The paper argues that, if digital designing differs from other forms of designing, then accounts for such differences must be sought by understanding the material properties of digital systems and the genres of practice that surround their use. Perspectives from human-computer interaction (HCI) and the psychology of programming are used to examine how such an understanding might be constructed.</p
Links between the personalities, styles and performance in computer programming
There are repetitive patterns in strategies of manipulating source code. For
example, modifying source code before acquiring knowledge of how a code works
is a depth-first style and reading and understanding before modifying source
code is a breadth-first style. To the extent we know there is no study on the
influence of personality on them. The objective of this study is to understand
the influence of personality on programming styles. We did a correlational
study with 65 programmers at the University of Stuttgart. Academic achievement,
programming experience, attitude towards programming and five personality
factors were measured via self-assessed survey. The programming styles were
asked in the survey or mined from the software repositories. Performance in
programming was composed of bug-proneness of programmers which was mined from
software repositories, the grades they got in a software project course and
their estimate of their own programming ability. We did statistical analysis
and found that Openness to Experience has a positive association with
breadth-first style and Conscientiousness has a positive association with
depth-first style. We also found that in addition to having more programming
experience and better academic achievement, the styles of working depth-first
and saving coarse-grained revisions improve performance in programming.Comment: 27 pages, 6 figure
Towards a framework for investigating tangible environments for learning
External representations have been shown to play a key role in mediating cognition. Tangible environments offer the opportunity for novel representational formats and combinations, potentially increasing representational power for supporting learning. However, we currently know little about the specific learning benefits of tangible environments, and have no established framework within which to analyse the ways that external representations work in tangible environments to support learning. Taking external representation as the central focus, this paper proposes a framework for investigating the effect of tangible technologies on interaction and cognition. Key artefact-action-representation relationships are identified, and classified to form a structure for investigating the differential cognitive effects of these features. An example scenario from our current research is presented to illustrate how the framework can be used as a method for investigating the effectiveness of differential designs for supporting science learning
An Exploratory Study of Forces and Frictions affecting Large-Scale Model-Driven Development
In this paper, we investigate model-driven engineering, reporting on an
exploratory case-study conducted at a large automotive company. The study
consisted of interviews with 20 engineers and managers working in different
roles. We found that, in the context of a large organization, contextual forces
dominate the cognitive issues of using model-driven technology. The four forces
we identified that are likely independent of the particular abstractions chosen
as the basis of software development are the need for diffing in software
product lines, the needs for problem-specific languages and types, the need for
live modeling in exploratory activities, and the need for point-to-point
traceability between artifacts. We also identified triggers of accidental
complexity, which we refer to as points of friction introduced by languages and
tools. Examples of the friction points identified are insufficient support for
model diffing, point-to-point traceability, and model changes at runtime.Comment: To appear in proceedings of MODELS 2012, LNCS Springe
A document-like software visualization method for effective cognition of c-based software systems
It is clear that maintenance is a crucial and very costly process in a software life cycle. Nowadays there are a lot of software systems particularly legacy systems that are always maintained from time to time as new requirements arise. One important source to understand a software system before it is being maintained is through the documentation, particularly system documentation. Unfortunately, not all software systems developed or maintained are accompanied with their reliable and updated documents. In this case, source codes will be the only reliable source for programmers. A number of studies have been carried out in order to assist cognition based on source codes. One way is through tool automation via reverse engineering technique in which source codes will be parsed and the information extracted will be visualized using certain visualization methods. Most software visualization methods use graph as the main element to represent extracted software artifacts. Nevertheless, current methods tend to produce more complicated graphs and do not grant an explicit, document-like re-documentation environment. Hence, this thesis proposes a document-like software visualization method called DocLike Modularized Graph (DMG). The method is realized in a prototype tool named DocLike Viewer that targets on C-based software systems. The main contribution of the DMG method is to provide an explicit structural re-document mechanism in the software visualization tool. Besides, the DMG method provides more level of information abstractions via less complex graph that include inter-module dependencies, inter-program dependencies, procedural abstraction and also parameter passing. The DMG method was empirically evaluated based on the Goal/Question/Metric (GQM) paradigm and the findings depict that the method can improve productivity and quality in the aspect of cognition or program comprehension. A usability study was also conducted and DocLike Viewer had the most positive responses from the software practitioners
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