Scott A. Turner

minimUML: A minimalist approach to UML diagramming for early computer science education

In introductory computer science courses, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is commonly used to teach basic object-oriented design. However, there appears to be a lack of suitable software to support this task. Many of the available programs that support UML focus on developing code and not on enhancing learning. Programs designed for educational use sometimes have poor interfaces or are missing common and important features such as multiple selection and undo/redo. Hence the need for software that is tailored to an instructional environment and that has all the useful and needed functionality for that specific task. This is the purpose of minimUML. It provides a minimum amount of UML, just what is commonly used in beginning programming classes, and a simple, usable interface. In particular, minimUML is designed to support abstract design while supplying features for exploratory learning and error avoidance. It supports functionality that includes multiple selection, undo/redo, flexible printing, cut and paste, and drag and drop. In addition, it allows for the annotation of diagrams, through text or free-form drawings, so students can receive feedback on their work. minimUML was developed with the goals of supporting ease of use, of supporting novice students, and of requiring no prior training for its use. This article presents the rationale behind the minimUML design, a description of the tool, and the results of usability evaluations and student feedback on the use of the tool.

Requirements for electronic note taking systems: A field study of note taking in university classrooms

Note taking is the core activity for students in a classroom. There has been a large amount of research conducted, both from industry and from academia, into facilitating the note-taking process. There is evidence that shows that note taking can be beneficial for the students’ educational growth. There are also many available systems for taking notes electronically (e.g. Tablet PCs, PDAs). However, what has not been given as much attention is how these electronic devices affect (or support) the note taking task. In this paper, we study university students’ current note taking behavior and the changes caused by the use of electronic systems for this activity. The goal of our work is to identify issues that should be considered when evaluating electronic note taking systems and to formulate requirements for future electronic note-taking systems. Our findings show that while the technological support for writing with pens on electronic surfaces is quite advanced, the task of note taking in the classroom is not well supported. We identify the limitations of typical note taking systems and discuss the implications for the design of future note taking systems. Our work consisted of three parts: a survey of current note-taking practices, an observational study in a classroom environment, and a semester long case study of students using electronic note-taking devices. All of these activities took place at a large 4-year university. We found that the people reacted to note-taking devices very differently and that their current practices were not always well supported. The users all wanted to input information as fast as possible, in the manner they wanted but they were not always able to achieve that. Hardware limitations (i.e. screen size, responsiveness) added to this issue. We also found that the features that are well supported in an electronic medium (i.e. modification, reorganizing, multiple pen colors/styles, handwriting recognition, sharing) were not commonly used or wanted.

Misunderstandings about object-oriented design: experiences using code reviews

In this paper we present our experience using code reviews in a CS2 course. In particular, we highlight a series of misunderstandings of object-oriented (OO) concepts we observed as a by-product of the code review exercise. In our activity, we asked students to review code, rate it using a rubric, and to justify their explanation. The students were asked to review two solutions to a project from a previous year. Through examples of their explanations, we found that students had a number of basic misunderstandings of object-oriented principles. In this paper, we present our observations of the misunderstandings, and present some general observations of how code reviews can be used as an assessment tool in CS2.