Reusable and Sharable Learning Objects Supporting Students’ Learning of Data Structures in University Courses

Data structures are a conceptually demanding topic which confronts many computer science students early in their course. The topic has a strong conceptual basis and often proves difficult for many to grasp. This paper reports on a project which has developed a range of learning objects to help students learn about the different data structures and the algorithms by which they are controlled. Called VIDSAA, the suite of learning objects provides a visual representation which enables students to observe and interact with a large number of data structure algorithms as they are run and to observe and view the outcomes. The objects have been designed to enable students to explore and investigate the data structures as a means of developing their knowledge and understanding. The paper describes the design and development strategies that underpinned the development of the learning objects and showcases the resulting products. It discusses a project to explore how teachers and students might use the objects and the support they provide for learning

Reusable and Sharable Learning Objects Supporting Students’ Learning of Data Structures in University Courses

Data structures are a conceptually demanding topic which confronts many computer science students early in their course. The topic has a strong conceptual basis and often proves difficult for many to grasp. This paper reports on a project which has developed a range of learning objects to help students learn about the different data structures and the algorithms by which they are controlled. Called VIDSAA, the suite of learning objects provides a visual representation which enables students to observe and interact with a large number of data structure algorithms as they are run and to observe and view the outcomes. The objects have been designed to enable students to explore and investigate the data structures as a means of developing their knowledge and understanding. The paper describes the design and development strategies that underpinned the development of the learning objects and showcases the resulting products. It discusses a project to explore how teachers and students might use the objects and the support they provide for learning

Design of teacher assistance tools in an exploratory learning environment for algebraic generalisation

The MiGen project is designing and developing an intelligent exploratory environment to support 11-14 year-old students in their learning of algebraic generalisation. Deployed within the classroom, the system also provides tools to assist teachers in monitoring students' activities and progress. This paper describes the architectural design of these Teacher Assistance tools and gives a detailed description of one such tool, focussing in particular on the research challenges faced, and the technologies and approaches chosen to implement the necessary functionalities given the context of the project

Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research

Proceedings of the Second Program Visualization Workshop, 2002

The Program Visualization Workshops aim to bring together researchers who design and construct program visualizations and, above all, educators who use and evaluate visualizations in their teaching. The first workshop took place in July 2000 at Porvoo, Finland. The second workshop was held in cooperation with ACM SIGCSE and took place at HornstrupCentret, Denmark in June 2002, immediately following the ITiCSE 2002 Conference in Aarhus, Denmark

Stomach disease ITS

This paper aims is to present the design and development of an intelligent tutoring system for teaching students about stomach diseases to help and give them a clear idea about stomach ulcer diseases. Furthermore, the researchers designed an intelligent tutoring system with a clear interface including 3D animation with Delphi that show how the ulcer appears in the stomach with more details about the disease, after that there are some questions researchers going to adopt from clinical books about the diseases that show the students how to diagnose the diseases. This system integrated Delphi programming with multimedia elements such as (voice, motion, text, photo, and interactive) to carry out the project. The idea of this paper is considering the intelligent tutoring system for students who are studying medicine to enhance their knowledge and deep understanding about the diseases

The pedagogy of computer programming using cognitive development through an e-learning object

Motivated by the needs of a pedagogy focusing on minimizing the learning difficulties in program semantics knowledge and logical reasoning, this research project develops a cognitive development-based pedagogy for introductory programming to support students in organizing and constructing knowledge to learn computer programming. A pedagogy is described as a practice and learning theory that defines the teaching and learning. Regarding the practice of this pedagogy, it uses a cognitive learning tool, called e-learning object, to support the scaffolding. With regard to the theory, this pedagogy is developed based on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and Piaget’s theory for cognitive development. In particular the scaffolding of this pedagogy includes three major learning processes. The first two learning processes focus on supporting students constructing knowledge on program semantics and conceptually map this knowledge to the coding process. The last learning process extends the learning to self-practice by demanding students to complete a set of exercises independently. All of these learning processes are supported by using the e-learning object, which is the major cognitive learning tool used in this pedagogy to support cognitive development. It is called e-learning object as it is designed by organizing a group of learning objects, in which each of them is to deliver the concepts of a specific unit topic of program control. Together with the course materials, these learning objects are accessed through the college’s ‘Blackboard System’. In addition to the major objective of improving students’ learning performance, this cognitive development-based pedagogy also extends from this objective to find out whether the positive learning outcome connects to cognitive development, and also whether this pedagogy can be embraced by teachers for use in their teaching processes. With these objectives, six research questions are defined in two stages of study. Research questions Q1 and Q2 are used to study students’ learning outcomes in year 1 and 2, and research questions Q3 to Q5 are used to find out whether students’ learning outcomes are connected to cognitive development. Research question Q6 focuses on whether this pedagogy matches teachers’ knowledge of using it, based on their knowledge of applying technology-based pedagogy. The research methodology of this project is the triangulation design where quantitative data are enriched by the collection of qualitative data. This mixture of quantitative and qualitative data collection in different research questions enables this study to interpret the values of this cognitive development-based pedagogy with different views from students and teachers. The research methods mainly include the quasi-experimental method, survey method and the rating scale anchoring method. With these methods, data are collected by using pre-test and post-test papers, questionnaires, and a checklist of rating scale anchoring mental specifications. They are analysed by two-tailed t-test, descriptive method with mean analysis and the one- way repeated measure ANOVA. These research and data analysis methods have been proven effective and used widely, in educational research projects. This research project makes four major contributions: (i) the e-learning object used in this pedagogy can be used to improve students’ learning performance in computer programming; (ii) evidence that a pedagogy focusing on cognitive development can be used to improve students’ learning performance without being limited by programming languages; (iii) development of a cognitive development- based pedagogy for wide use in introductory programming without being limited by teachers’ knowledge and programming languages; and (iv) learning with this cognitive development-based pedagogy builds up students’ problem-solving skills and applies them to different subject areas. With these achieved goals, this project therefore provides a conceptual and operational model for a pedagogical approach to Computer Science teachers design and use in their teaching process

Easy Java Simulations and the ComPADRE OSP collection

Current technologies allow physics educators the ability to combine traditional instruction with computational modeling. However, the implementation of a computational physics based modeling pedagogy requires a considerable programming effort for teachers and students who want to use this approach. This paper describes a pedagogy that limits the amount of programming when designing, implementing, distributing, and using computer models. It is based on the integration of the Easy Java Simulations modeling tool with the ComPADRE National Science Digital Library