Abstract:
A program visualization tool, Alice, has been used as the basis for the creation of a new and innovative curriculum for teaching first year computer science courses. In Alice, students build 3-D animated movies and 3-D interactive games as they learn to program. Alice has been used in both community colleges and traditional four-year institutions to increase the comprehension of basic computer science topics of novice programmers.
The Alice programming environment allows students to create programs using a "drag-and-drop" editor. Since the Alice software only provides valid syntax commands, programming is reduced to the development and implementation of appropriate algorithms, an essential programming skill regardless of language. Further, the Alice software allows students to test their algorithms visually. Objects are viewed on screen as animals, people, furniture and other items and may be programmed to move and interact. Students can test their programs by viewing the on-screen changes. The Alice curriculum is designed to exploit these features of the Alice software for the purpose of learning to program.
In this talk, we will briefly discuss the background of the problem, the nationwide decline of computing students, and then describe the aspects of our curricular solution, Alice. Results of some NSF-funded studies will be presented. The next version of Alice, Alice 3.0, will be discussed. Alice 3.0 has two major advantages over Alice 2.0: 1) the quality of the objects will be better, and objects will have a higher level of primitives, and 2) students will be able to program Alice worlds by typing Java code. Demos of Storytelling Alice (in which objects have a richer set of primitive motion instructions) and Alice 2.1 (in which students build Alice worlds by writing Java code) will be provided.