The overarching theme of this research project is to build a machine-accessible and mathematically precise abstraction of human body movement through experiments in programming an articulated puppet that imitates the human body structure and mobility within a "Real-Time Interactive Computer Animation" (RTICA). Human movement has been the…

This article explores how the adoption of educational robotics, cloud-based animation software, and simplified visual programming software can provide valuable opportunities for dialogic interaction and learning. The potentialities of this type of activity are often overlooked in dialogic investigations. Based on empirical illustration, we discuss…

The ability to code computer programs is considered an important part of literacy in today's society. This paper reports from a case study in two sixth-grade classes where Scratch coding was part of six mathematics lessons. The aim of the study was to investigate how Scratch coding affected students' interest development in coding and in…

Thermodynamic processes are complex phenomena that can be understood as a set of successive stages. When treating processes, classical thermodynamics (and most particularly, the Gibbsian formulation, predominantly used in chemistry) only pays attention to initial and final states. However, reintroducing the notion of process is absolutely…

Facing the need to introduce new approaches to teaching the art of programming to undergraduate Computer and Information Technology (CIT) students as part of the transition of the former Purdue College of Technology to the novel concept and status of Purdue Polytechnic, we came up with the idea of offering a pilot 300-level course entitled…

The first data structure that first-year undergraduate students learn during the programming and algorithms courses is the one-dimensional array. For novice programmers, it might be hard to understand different algorithms on arrays (e.g. searching, mirroring, sorting algorithms), because the algorithms dynamically change the values of elements. In…

The purpose of this study was twofold: to investigate students' concept images about class, object, and their relationship and to help them enhance their learning of these notions with a visualization tool. Fifty-six second-year university students participated in the study. To investigate his/her concept images, the researcher developed a survey…

Thanks to a slew of new, easy-to-use animation tools, one doesn't have to work at Pixar or DreamWorks to create a summer blockbuster. In fact, it's now a snap for young storytellers to learn the ABC's of animation. And that's bound to make learning a lot more interesting--and much more creative. At Springfield Township High School, in Erdenheim,…

Computer and video games have much in common with the strategies used in special education. Free resources for game development are becoming more widely available, so lay computer users, such as teachers and other practitioners, now have the capacity to develop games using a low budget and a little self-teaching. This article provides a guideline…

AutoTutor is a natural language tutoring system that has produced learning gains across multiple domains (e.g., computer literacy, physics, critical thinking). In this paper, we review the development, key research findings, and systems that have evolved from AutoTutor. First, the rationale for developing AutoTutor is outlined and the advantages…

AutoTutor is a natural language tutoring system that has produced learning gains across multiple domains (e.g., computer literacy, physics, critical thinking). In this paper, we review the development, key research findings, and systems that have evolved from AutoTutor. First, the rationale for developing AutoTutor is outlined and the advantages…

Visual program simulation (VPS) is a new, interactive form of educational program visualisation, in which learners use graphical controls to direct a program's execution rather than simply watching an animation of it. In this article, we report on a qualitative empirical study of novice programmers learning through VPS. From an analysis of…

This paper draws from research conducted as part of an Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project "Teaching effective 3D authoring in the middle years: multimedia grammatical design and multimedia authoring pedagogy", which is a collaboration between the University of New England, the University of Tasmania and the Australian…

For the forty-third time, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented online during the annual AECT Convention. Volume 1 contains 37 papers dealing primarily with research and development topics. Papers dealing with the…

Purpose: Teaching advanced technical concepts in a computer science program to students of different technical backgrounds presents many challenges. The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed experimental pedagogy in teaching advanced computer science topics, such as computer networking, telecommunications and data structures using…