TRACING LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN JAVA PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

The visualisation approach is one of the programming learning styles that has been taken into account in programming education. A collection of visualisation tools has emerged with the aim of assisting novice programmers in learning how to program. Each tool has its own set of features that may or may not be helpful in gaining a better understanding. The methods that we used in this study are focused on using memory referencing and visualisation to clarify what happens during individual program statement executions. Understanding the efficacy of current instructional resources is a critical component of gathering students' requirements and needs for future improvement. The “Tracing Learning Environment” (TLE) is developed for novice programmers to help them trace the sequence of execution of a software program and the reserved place of data in the memory. The framework relies on using visualisation as the programs are run and to show the effect of each statement in the code. It provides an environment for learners to see what happens to the data while running the program. The specification of the TLE draws largely on research regarding the role of visualisation in teaching computer programming and associated literature on tools to support learning programming. The TLE framework has been evaluated by conducting an empirical study using a mixed-method approach with novice and expert participants. The study has included surveys, focus groups, and semi-structured interviews. Student performance was measured before and after using the visualisation tool and compared with a control group who participated in a standard teaching session only. Early findings highlighted the need to visualise the control of the execution of code, evaluation of expressions, represent the class hierarchy along with the importance of a good interface/usability of the tool and to consider the programming languages supported. The evaluation findings are in line with the literature surrounding the benefits of using visualisation in learning to program. The findings found visualisation increased the students’ performance and confidence. When compared to the regular lab activities, the visualisation contributed to better understanding and support for learning to program.Ministry of Education, Saudi Arabi

Applying a User-centred Approach to Interactive Visualization Design

Analysing users in their context of work and finding out how and why they use different information resources is essential to provide interactive visualisation systems that match their goals and needs. Designers should actively involve the intended users throughout the whole process. This chapter presents a user-centered approach for the design of interactive visualisation systems. We describe three phases of the iterative visualisation design process: the early envisioning phase, the global specification hase, and the detailed specification phase. The whole design cycle is repeated until some criterion of success is reached. We discuss different techniques for the analysis of users, their tasks and domain. Subsequently, the design of prototypes and evaluation methods in visualisation practice are presented. Finally, we discuss the practical challenges in design and evaluation of collaborative visualisation environments. Our own case studies and those of others are used throughout the whole chapter to illustrate various approaches

Engineering simulations for cancer systems biology

Computer simulation can be used to inform in vivo and in vitro experimentation, enabling rapid, low-cost hypothesis generation and directing experimental design in order to test those hypotheses. In this way, in silico models become a scientific instrument for investigation, and so should be developed to high standards, be carefully calibrated and their findings presented in such that they may be reproduced. Here, we outline a framework that supports developing simulations as scientific instruments, and we select cancer systems biology as an exemplar domain, with a particular focus on cellular signalling models. We consider the challenges of lack of data, incomplete knowledge and modelling in the context of a rapidly changing knowledge base. Our framework comprises a process to clearly separate scientific and engineering concerns in model and simulation development, and an argumentation approach to documenting models for rigorous way of recording assumptions and knowledge gaps. We propose interactive, dynamic visualisation tools to enable the biological community to interact with cellular signalling models directly for experimental design. There is a mismatch in scale between these cellular models and tissue structures that are affected by tumours, and bridging this gap requires substantial computational resource. We present concurrent programming as a technology to link scales without losing important details through model simplification. We discuss the value of combining this technology, interactive visualisation, argumentation and model separation to support development of multi-scale models that represent biologically plausible cells arranged in biologically plausible structures that model cell behaviour, interactions and response to therapeutic interventions

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

Theoretical models of the role of visualisation in learning formal reasoning

Although there is empirical evidence that visualisation tools can help students to learn formal subjects such as logic, and although particular strategies and conceptual difficulties have been identified, it has so far proved difficult to provide a general model of learning in this context that accounts for these findings in a systematic way. In this paper, four attempts at explaining the relative difficulty of formal concepts and the role of visualisation in this learning process are presented. These explanations draw on several existing theories, including Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development, Green's Cognitive Dimensions, the Popper-Campbell model of conjectural learning, and cognitive complexity. The paper concludes with a comparison of the utility and applicability of the different models. It is also accompanied by a reflexive commentary[0] (linked to this paper as a hypertext) that examines the ways in which theory has been used within these arguments, and which attempts to relate these uses to the wider context of learning technology research

Two Turns Must Take Turns: Primary School Students' Cognition about 3D Rotation in a Virtual Reality Learning Environment

This paper reports on five primary school students’ explorations of 3D rotation in a virtual reality learning environment (VRLE) named VRMath. When asked to investigate if you would face the same direction when you turn right 45 degrees first then roll up 45 degrees, or when you roll up 45 degrees first then turn right 45 degrees, the students found that the different order of the two turns ended up with different directions in the VRLE. This was contrary to the students’ prior predictions based on using pen, paper and body movements. The findings of this study showed the difficulty young children have in perceiving and understanding the non-commutative nature of 3D rotation and the power of the computational VRLE in giving students experiences that they rarely have in real life with 3D manipulations and 3D mental movements

Incorporating interactive 3-dimensional graphics in astronomy research papers

Most research data collections created or used by astronomers are intrinsically multi-dimensional. In contrast, all visual representations of data presented within research papers are exclusively 2-dimensional. We present a resolution of this dichotomy that uses a novel technique for embedding 3-dimensional (3-d) visualisations of astronomy data sets in electronic-format research papers. Our technique uses the latest Adobe Portable Document Format extensions together with a new version of the S2PLOT programming library. The 3-d models can be easily rotated and explored by the reader and, in some cases, modified. We demonstrate example applications of this technique including: 3-d figures exhibiting subtle structure in redshift catalogues, colour-magnitude diagrams and halo merger trees; 3-d isosurface and volume renderings of cosmological simulations; and 3-d models of instructional diagrams and instrument designs.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, submitted to New Astronomy. For paper with 3-dimensional embedded figures, see http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/s2plot/3dpd