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Metaphors and analogies for teaching algorithms

Published: 29 February 2012 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper we explore the topic of using metaphors and analogies in teaching algorithms. We argue their importance in the teaching process. We present a selection of metaphors we successfully used when teaching algorithms to secondary school students. We also discuss the suitability of several commonly used metaphors, and in several cases we show significant weaknesses of these metaphors.

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGCSE '12: Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education
February 2012
734 pages
ISBN:9781450310987
DOI:10.1145/2157136
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]

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Published: 29 February 2012

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Author Tags

  1. abstraction
  2. mental model
  3. metaphor
  4. physical analogy
  5. teaching algorithms

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SIGCSE '12
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SIGCSE '12: The 43rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
February 29 - March 3, 2012
North Carolina, Raleigh, USA

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SIGCSE '12 Paper Acceptance Rate 100 of 289 submissions, 35%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,787 of 5,146 submissions, 35%

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  • (2025)A Conceptual Metaphor Analysis of Recursion in a CS1 CourseProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701949(457-463)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
  • (2025)Larger than Life In-Class Demonstrations for Introductory Machine LearningProceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3641554.3701803(220-226)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2025
  • (2024)What Is an Algorithm?Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Sixth Edition10.4018/978-1-6684-7366-5.ch072(1-17)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2023)Teaching Algorithms Design Approaches via Interactive Jupyter NotebooksEuropean Journal of Technic10.36222/ejt.1320404Online publication date: 30-Jun-2023
  • (2023)More (Sema|Meta)phors: Additional Perspectives on Analogy Use from Concurrent Programming StudentsProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588831(166-172)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Pedagogical Prisms: Toward Domain Isomorphic Analogy Design for Relevance and Engagement in Computing EducationProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588830(410-416)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
  • (2023)Say What You Meme: Exploring Memetic Comprehension Among Students and Potential Value of Memes for CS Education ContextsProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3568813.3600144(416-429)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
  • (2023)Effectiveness of Metaphors in Problem Based Learning2023 2nd Edition of IEEE Delhi Section Flagship Conference (DELCON)10.1109/DELCON57910.2023.10127310(1-6)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2023
  • (2022)Semaphore or Metaphor?Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 110.1145/3502718.3524796(200-206)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
  • (2022)Learning Object-Oriented Programming Concepts Through Visual AnalogiesIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2022.315480515:1(78-92)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2022
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