Michael B. Feldman

Assessing the benefits of interactive prediction using Web-based algorithm animation courseware

This study used educational software—courseware—that contained algorithm animations and data structure visualizations that were implemented with the programming language Java, and were embedded in a collection of World Wide Web pages. The objective of this study was to determine whether the interactive prediction facility provided by this courseware produced a significant learning advantage. Two experiments were conducted. The results indicated that the students who used the interactive version of the courseware spent significantly more time using it than those who used the noninteractive version. Students who used the interactive version scored better on several of the questions that tested the more difficult lessons, but performed more poorly overall. None of the differences were statistically significant.

Toward the design and development of style-independent interactive systems

The research project in which we are involved seeks to improve the technical climate for experimentation with the human factors of interactive systems by developing tool Kits to aid the experimenter [3,5]. These capabilities are in two general areas: languages and metrics to support the specification of user interfaces [1] and the evaluation of them with respect to ergonomic factors; and tools to facilitate the development of user interfaces at moderate cost and with short lead time. The latter area, which we have called “style-independent interactive systems”, or “abstract interaction handlers”, is taken up in this report.

Ada experience in the undergraduate curriculum

of the Ada language as used in computing curricula, with particular reference to undergraduate computing programs. The main points discussed in this article are: * Use of Ada in the universities and colleges is growing slowly but mono-tonically. Perhaps 10% of academic institutions teach Ada in at least one course of some kind. • We have identified 48 institutions in which Ada is introduced as the language of the first course, and 31 more in which Ada is introduced in the second or third course, still early enough to propagate through the upper-level curriculum. These numbers have grown slowly each year for the last 10 years. • Of the institutions using Ada as an important language in their programs , most can be considered teaching rather than research institutions, and most have no particular ties to the federal government.. Of the institutions that have attempted Ada recently at the introductory level, we are aware of only one (a two-year college), that gave it up for another language. In schools that give Ada a serious attempt, teachers and students generally react favorably and tend to stay with it. * Fourteen textbooks are currently available that use Ada as their language of discourse and are oriented to specific undergraduate courses. Six of these are suitable for use in a CSl-level introductory course with no programming prerequisites. Sev-in the Curriculum l)letion. • Of the more than 250 Ada compilers holding government-based validations , most are still rather expensive , even after typical academic discounts. However, enough affordable systems are available for typical academic computing platforms to enable institutions to license them for fees well within their budgets. • With the recent release of New York Universitys Ada/Ed for free distribution, it is now feasible for teachers to distribute, at no cost to their employers or their students, a quite robust personal Ada system that appears to be adequate for any reasonable introductory course sequence. A compiler to be included in the Free Software Foundation distribution is under development at New York University with Ada 9X Project funding; release is planned for 1993. The remainder of this article is organized in four sections: Institutions in which Ada is taught; Ada-related textbooks suitable for undergraduate courses; Ada compilers on the campus ; and First-person profiles of institutions in which Ada is important. During the summer and fall of 1991, the Ada Information Clearinghouse (AdaIC), operated …

Concurrent programming CAN be introduced into the lower-level undergraduate curriculum

There have been selected cases of satisfactorily teaching undergraduates the topic of concurrent programming. However, these reported experiences did not validate nor invalidate the feasibility claim as they did not provide statistical evidence and validity threat acknowledgments. Prior to this study, there have not been any controlled experiments to address the feasibility of introducing concurrent programming into the curriculum. Unfortunately, in curriculum development, it is seldom that we make decisions based on experimentation. We conducted a controlled experiment to determine whether introducing concurrent programming into the novice or lower-level undergraduate curriculum is possible. The experimental hypotheses examined concurrent programming from a concepts perspective and a problem-solving perspective. We conducted a detailed analysis of both internal and external validity threats to assess not only the validity, but the generalizability of the findings. The findings provide scientific evidence that introducing concurrent programming into the novice or lower-level undergraduate curriculum is possible.

SMALL-Ada: personal computer courseware for studying concurrent programming

INTRODUCTION Support for concurrent programming, traditionally provided to the programmer by means of calls to operating system services, has received considerable attention from language designers in recent years. The goal of this effort has been to raise the level of abstraction of concurrent programming, providing ever more powerful language primitives, transferring responsibility for the details from the programmer to the compiler implementer, Indeed, what is happening now in concurrent programming echoes what happened in sequential “structured programming” perhaps fifteen years ago.

An empirical study of Web-based algorithm animation courseware in an Ada data structure course

1. ABSTRACT In this paper, we describe Web-based courseware, which we developed, that contains exercises that use algorithm animation and visualization. It is intended for students in an introductory data structure course in Ada. We also discuss the results of an empirical study that we conducted using this courseware. In the study, we measured whether the interactive feature included in the courseware influenced student performance and whether student learning styles were a factor. No significant differences were found. A redesigned, more tightly controlled experiment is planned to more definitively answer this question. 1.1

Validating a demonstration tool for graphics-assisted debugging of Ada concurrent programs

A demonstration-quality graphics-assisted debugger is developed for intertask communication in Ada. Based on the static task-specification diagrams of G. Booch (Software Engineering with Ada, Benjamin/Cummings, 1983), the debugger animates the activity of a collection of communicating tasks, and it runs on a DEC GIGI terminal connected to a VAX 11-780 under TeleSofts partial Ada compiler. The model has been subjected to empirical validation, using undergraduate students as experimental subjects. Subjects were required to debug erroneous tasking programs using both the graphical debugger and a textual one. It is concluded that although the problems to be addressed in the development and evaluation of a graphical debugging tool for Ada tasks are nontrivial, the benefits could be worth the effort. >

The portable dining philosophers: a movable feast of concurrency and software engineering

This paper describes a course-related project in concurrent programming using the Ada language. Dijkstra’s famous “dining philosophers” problem [Dijkstra 71] is used as a vehicle for developing a program rich enough in system construction problems to be realistic yet small enough to be manageable in a classroom situation. The program-PortabIe Diners—is also nicely animated and fun to observe in execution.

Teaching data structures with Ada: an eight-year perspective

THE RECENT HISTORY OF CSci 15 9 CSci 159, Programming and Data Strucrures,is an undergraduate course in the Georg e Washington University Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, required fo r undergraduate majors in computer science and computer engineering . The course is also populate d by would-be graduate computer science majors who have a weak background in modern dat a structures, and by graduate students from other fields . Typical enrollment is in the neighborhoo d of 100-150 students per year .

Abstract types, ADA packages, and the teaching of data structures

This paper describes a course in Data Structures offered to upper-division undergraduates and beginning graduate students. In addition to the usual data-structures topics, Computer Science 159 places a strong emphasis on software engineering principles, especially the implementation of abstract data types using Ada packages. Two programming project series are presented; documentation requirements are described in some detail. Attention is paid to the problem of translating high-level design concepts, as embodied in Ada, into the more limited data structures and modularization features of earlier languages.