Curt Hill

Virtual environments for education

WWWIC, the NDSU World Wide Web Instructional Committee, is engaged in developing a range of virtual environments for education. These projects span a range of disciplines, from earth science to anthropology, and from business to biology. However, all of these projects share a strategy, a set of assumptions, an approach to assessment, and an emerging tool set, which allows each to leverage from the insights and advances of the others.

Knowledge building using visualizations

In this paper, we describe our efforts in knowledge building by creating visualizations. Our efforts include problem-based learning. We have identified a problem that the students have in learning OOP. To solve that problem we engage our students in the classroom using existing visualizations created by students of the earlier class, then we have the currents students improve the existing visualizations, or create new visualizations for future use in the same class. We describe the process of building knowledge, problem based learning, the details of the visualizations, our observations and the merits of this approach.

The grader in ProgrammingLand

In this paper, we describe a customized instructional content delivery system named ProgrammingLand with special emphasis on a program evaluation module named TorqueMOODa. The system is fully online and is used as a component of several classroom courses, as well the foundation of comparable distance education classes. The context of these systems is the early programming classes often taken by introductory Computer Science students, among others.

Agents help students in ProgrammingLand

ProgrammingLand is an online system for delivering content to introductory computer science courses as a substitute for a conventional textbook. Because the system has a large number of exhibits, sometimes students were not finding the material needed. The system was recently enhanced with several agents to direct students to pertinent locations. This paper discusses the capabilities and techniques of these agents.Preliminary data from the use of ProgrammingLand in two different introductory programming classes is discussed. This data suggests that the agents are successful in aiding students, especially those who are struggling.

An online resource for the introductory programming class

The facilities and uses of the ProgrammingLand MOOseum are described. ProgrammingLand is a powerful tool to supplement a conventional classroom course in beginning Computer Science topics as well as a self-contained vehicle for distance learning. It is based on a MOO, a multiuser, interactive server accessible to anyone with Internet access. It delivers the content information, records student progress, fosters collaboration, assigns projects, records the grades of the projects, allows the students to practice what they have learned and assists the instructor in monitoring their progress. It is not a panacea for all academic woes, but has shown itself a useful tool in teaching introductory students in programming and early CS topics. This tool has been under development and in use for several years. Several students have used it as an online distance education mechanism, but far more have used it as an adjunct to otherwise normal classes.

ProgrammingLand: A visualization enhanced hypertextbook

ProgrammingLand is a visualization enhanced hypertextbook designed and used to teach introductory computer science courses. It is based upon a MOO with a Web browser interface. It functions as an online resource that may replace both the course textbook as well as a learning management system. The system may provide supplementary content material, such as a textbook, to an otherwise conventional course. It may also serve as the entire body of content in a distance education course. This content will generally be in the form of text, but may include graphics, Java applets and other types of interactive exercises to teach and reinforce this material. The system is organized into hierarchical lessons. It monitors each students progress through an instructor- chosen list of lessons. The instructor may choose assignments for the system to give a student upon completion of the lesson. Like a textbook, different instructors may choose to use different material or different features that are present in the system. ProgrammingLand has been used at several different institutions for the last few years and is freely available under the GNU license.