Increasing Adoption of Smart Learning Content for Computer Science Education

Peter Brusilovsky, Stephen Edwards, Amruth Kumar, Lauri Malmi, Luciana Benotti, Duane Buck, Petri Ihantola, Rikki Prince, Teemu Sirkiä, Sergey Sosnovsky, Jaime Urquiza-Fuentes, Arto Vihavainen, Michael Wollowski. Working groups reports at ACM ITiCSE - Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Conference 2014.

Abstract: Computer science educators are increasingly using interactive learning content to enrich and enhance the pedagogy of their courses. A plethora of such learning content, specifically designed for computer science education, such as visualization, simulation, and web-based environments for learning programming, are now available for various courses. We call such content smart learning content. However, such learning content is seldom used outside its host site despite the benefits it could offer to learners everywhere. In this paper, we investigate the factors that impede dissemination of such content among the wider computer science education community. To accomplish this we surveyed educators, existing tools and recent research literature to identify the current state of the art and analyzed the characteristics of a large number of smart learning content examples along canonical dimensions. In our analysis we focused on examining the technical issues that must be resolved to support finding, integrating and customizing smart learning content in computer science courses. Finally, we propose a new architecture for hosting, integrating and disseminating smart learning content and discuss how it could be implemented based on existing protocols and standards.

Improving Compilers Education through Symbol Tables Animations

J. Urquiza-Fuentes, F. Manso, J.Á. Velázquez-Iturbide, M. Rubio-Sánchez. 16th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) 2011, Pages 203-207
Abstract. This paper presents the evaluation of an educational tool focused on the visualization of the symbol table in the context of a compiler course. In a first evaluation we used simulation exercises and tested basic concepts of symbol tables. We detected efficiency improvements, students who used the tool completed the exercises with the same grading and significantly faster than the students who did not use the tool. In addition students' opinion was positive. In a second evaluation we used more active tasks, and tested students' skills on writing parser specifications regarding symbol table management. We have detected significant improvements. Students who used the tool outperformed those who did not use the tool in a 22%.

A Survey of Successful Evaluations of Program Visualization and Algorithm Animation Systems

J. Urquiza-Fuentes, J.Á. Velázquez-Iturbide. Trans. Comput. Educ. 9(2), June 2009, Pages 1-21

Abstract. This article reviews successful educational experiences in using program and algorithm visualizations (PAVs). First, we survey a total of 18 PAV systems that were subject to 33 evaluations. We found that half of the systems have only been tested for usability, and those were shallow inspections. The rest were evaluated with respect to their educational effectiveness. Script-based systems seem to be well suited for the viewing, responding, and changing engagement levels, while compiler-based systems do well for the construction and presenting engagement levels. Finally, we analyze additional PAV features of successful evaluations and hypothesize that they are relevant.

WinHIPE: an IDE for functional programming based on rewriting and visualization

C. Pareja-Flores, J. Urquiza-Fuentes, J.Á. Velázquez-Iturbide. ACM SIGPLAN Notices 42(3), 2007, Pages 14-23 

Abstract. The article describes an IDE for functional programming, called WinHIPE. It provides an interactive and flexible tracer, as well as a powerful visualization and animation system. The former tool is based on the rewriting model of evaluation, and the latter provides automatic generation of visualizations and animations, friendly support for customization, maintenance and exportation of animations to the Web, and facilities to cope with large scale. Its main advantage over other visualization systems is an effortless approach to animation creation and maintenance, based on generating visualizations and animations automatically, as a side effect of program execution. Finally, we briefly describe our experience using the system during several years in educational settings.

Electronic books for programming education: a review and future prospects

Programming is a suitable field to design electronic books with a laboratory component, where the programming task is exercised in the theoretical context provided by the book. The goal of the paper is to make a review of current electronic books for programming education and identify future lines of research. First, we review a number of software tools and electronic books for programming education in order to give a broad vision of technological opportunities in programming education. Later, a comparative analysis of such electronic books is made. Finally, based on this overview and analysis, we identify aspects that either are currently poorly supported or are a subject of active research, thus constituting potential areas for future improvement.

R. Martínez-Unanue, M. Paredes-Velasco, C. Pareja-Flores, J. Urquiza-Fuentes, and J. Á. Velázquez-Iturbide. 2002. Electronic books for programming education: a review and future prospects. In Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education (ITiCSE ’02). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 34-38. DOI=10.1145/544414.544426

Approaches to comprehension-preserving graphical reduction of program visualizations

Past research efforts on the educational effectiveness of software animations agree in the necessity of active involvement of users, i.e. students and teachers. However, one of the main obstacles is the technical difficulty to produce them. Our approach seeks to generate software animations analogously to the generation of documents in office applications. The availability of static visualizations allows the user to define animations friendly; thus, he/she can select the most relevant ones to illustrate meaningfully the algorithm. The selection is facilitated if (ideally) all the static visualizations are simultaneously shown to the user. This sets a novel problem: reducing the size of visualizations while preserving their comprehensibility. In this paper we describe the problem and identify the main difficulties. We think that there is no single solution to the problem. We describe several approaches to this problem, as well as our first, qualitative findings.

F. Naharro-Berrocal, C. Pareja-Flores, J. Urquiza-Fuentes, and J. Á. Velázquez-Iturbide. 2002. Approaches to comprehension-preserving graphical reduction of program visualizations. In Proceedings of the 2002 ACM symposium on Applied computing (SAC ’02). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 771-777. DOI=10.1145/508791.508941