skip to main content
10.1145/1148493.1148521acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagessoftvisConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Adding procedures and pointers to the ALVIS algorithm visualization software: a preliminary design

Published: 04 September 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, we have been developing ALVIS, a new breed of algorithm visualization software that supports a novel, "studio based" approach to teaching introductory programming. In this approach, students, working in pairs, use the ALVIS software to construct their own algorithmic solutions to appropriate algorithm design problems. ALVIS automatically generates accompanying algorithm visualizations, which students can augment with their own visual and storytelling elements prior to presenting them to their peers and instructor for feedback and discussion. We believe the pedagogical value of this approach rests in students' active engagement in constructing and subsequently discussing their algorithmic solutions. Previous versions of the ALVIS software have enabled students to create only single-procedure, array iterative algorithms. We describe here our preliminary work toward expanding ALVIS so that it supports parameterized procedures and pointers. Our ultimate aim is to explore the pedagogical value of using ALVIS as the basis of an entire "studio based" introductory programming course for students without prior programming experience.

References

[1]
Ben-Bassat Levy, R., Ben-Ari, M. and Uronen, P. (2003) The Jeliot 2000 program animation system. Computers&Education, 40, 1, 2003, 1--15.
[2]
Hundhausen, C. D. and Brown, J. L. (In press). What You See Is What You Code: A 'Live' Algorithm Development and Visualization Environment for Novice Learners. J. Visual Languages and Computing.
[3]
Hundhausen, C. D., Farley, S. and Brown, J. L. (In press). Can direct manipulation lower the barriers to programming and promote positive transfer to textual programming? An experimental study. In Proc. 2006 IEEE VL/HCC. Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

Cited By

View all
  • (2019)VISON: An Ontology-Based Approach for Software Visualization Tool Discoverability2019 Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT)10.1109/VISSOFT.2019.00014(45-55)Online publication date: Sep-2019
  • (2011)Empirical studies on programming language stimuliSoftware Quality Journal10.1007/s11219-010-9106-719:1(65-99)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2011
  • (2009)Can direct manipulation lower the barriers to computer programming and promote transfer of training?ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/1592440.159244216:3(1-40)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2009

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
SoftVis '06: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM symposium on Software visualization
September 2006
199 pages
ISBN:1595934642
DOI:10.1145/1148493
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 September 2006

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. algorithm visualization
  2. studio-based algorithms course

Qualifiers

  • Article

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 20 of 65 submissions, 31%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)4
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
Reflects downloads up to 13 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2019)VISON: An Ontology-Based Approach for Software Visualization Tool Discoverability2019 Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT)10.1109/VISSOFT.2019.00014(45-55)Online publication date: Sep-2019
  • (2011)Empirical studies on programming language stimuliSoftware Quality Journal10.1007/s11219-010-9106-719:1(65-99)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2011
  • (2009)Can direct manipulation lower the barriers to computer programming and promote transfer of training?ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/1592440.159244216:3(1-40)Online publication date: 24-Sep-2009

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media