Studying the Effectiveness of Code Animation
Location
Presentation- Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing
Document Type and Release Option
Thesis Presentation (Archived)
Faculty Mentor
Daniel Liang
Faculty Mentor Email
dliang@georgiasouthern.edu
Presentation Year
2021
Start Date
26-4-2021 12:00 AM
End Date
30-4-2021 12:00 AM
Keywords
code animation
Description
Teaching and learning programming effectively is a struggle for both teachers and students. Many students struggle to read and understand code when they are first learning to code. Many students who are new to programming struggle to follow the code for numerous reasons including getting lost in all of the method calls within the code. To help with this problem of struggling students, Code Animation was developed. Code Animation is a visual and audio tool developed using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to trace the execution of a program. Code Animation goes through code line by line giving the user annotations and other visualizations in an attempt to better explain code to a student than if the student were to simply read the code on their own or if they were to attempt to follow along with an instructor going over it. Code Animation allows for students to go at their own pace which helps prevent students from getting lost while looking at code leading them to not understanding the rest of code or the entire program all together.
Since the effectiveness of Code Animation is untested, we will determine if Code Animation is an effective tool or not for teaching students how to understand code. We will also look to find improvements that can be made to Code Animation in order to improve it. Students will be tested on their understanding of recursion, which is a common and important programming technique that many students struggle with. Before being tested on recursion, one group of students will be shown a Code Animation explanation of a recursive program written in Java while the other group will not be shown a Code Animation explanation. Based on the results from the students, we will determine Code Animations appears to have an impact on the performance of students on the test.
Academic Unit
Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing
Studying the Effectiveness of Code Animation
Presentation- Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing
Teaching and learning programming effectively is a struggle for both teachers and students. Many students struggle to read and understand code when they are first learning to code. Many students who are new to programming struggle to follow the code for numerous reasons including getting lost in all of the method calls within the code. To help with this problem of struggling students, Code Animation was developed. Code Animation is a visual and audio tool developed using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to trace the execution of a program. Code Animation goes through code line by line giving the user annotations and other visualizations in an attempt to better explain code to a student than if the student were to simply read the code on their own or if they were to attempt to follow along with an instructor going over it. Code Animation allows for students to go at their own pace which helps prevent students from getting lost while looking at code leading them to not understanding the rest of code or the entire program all together.
Since the effectiveness of Code Animation is untested, we will determine if Code Animation is an effective tool or not for teaching students how to understand code. We will also look to find improvements that can be made to Code Animation in order to improve it. Students will be tested on their understanding of recursion, which is a common and important programming technique that many students struggle with. Before being tested on recursion, one group of students will be shown a Code Animation explanation of a recursive program written in Java while the other group will not be shown a Code Animation explanation. Based on the results from the students, we will determine Code Animations appears to have an impact on the performance of students on the test.
Comments
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