Algorithms are hard to understand for novice computer science students because they dynamically modify values of elements of abstract data structures. Animations can help to understand algorithms, since they connect abstract concepts to real life objects and situations. In the past 30-35 years, there have been conducted many experiments in the…

As oil is the fuel of the industrial society, software is the fuel of our current information society. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be more demand for computing jobs in the future. By 2024, more than one million computing jobs will be available. Statistics show that there is more demand for computing jobs than there is a…

Database technology affects many disciplines beyond computer science and business. This paper describes two animations developed with images and color that visually and dynamically introduce fundamental relational database concepts and querying to students of many majors. The goal is for educators in diverse academic disciplines to incorporate the…

We present CSTutor, a sketch-based interface designed to help students understand data structures, specifically Linked Lists, Binary Search Trees, AVL Trees, and Heaps. CSTutor creates an environment that seamlessly combines a user's sketched diagram and code. In each of these data structure modes, the user can naturally sketch a data structure on…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of reflective thinking effects in the process of designing software on students' learning performances. The study contends that reflective thinking is a useful teaching strategy to improve learning performance among lower achieving students. Participants were students from two groups: Higher…

This article reports on an experiment undertaken in order to evaluate the effect of a program visualization tool for helping students to better understand the dynamics of object-oriented programs. The concrete tool used was BlueJ's debugger and object inspector. The study was done as a control-group experiment in an introductory programming…

The inclusion of digital multimedia into teaching and learning has changed instructional strategies in the classroom. While this course has been traditionally given in lecture-based environment, an attempt was made to move it towards a more multimedia-mediated environment to provide a student-centred approach in teaching the principles of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of advance organizers and audio narrations used to complement animated instruction on tests measuring different educational objectives. One hundred forty-one participants were randomly assigned to five treatment groups, received their respective instructional presentation and completed four…