Vassilios Dagdilelis

Teaching (with) robots in secondary schools: some new and not-so-new pedagogical problems

Research on the teaching of programming has shown that novice programmers often come up against significant difficulties in understanding programming concepts as well as in finding solutions to even elementary programming problems. One of the basic strategies which has been adopted in order to confront this problem, were programming languages and environments created with the specific aim to make both the teaching and learning processes of programming easier. A typical category of these types of environments consists of systems where the novice programmer manipulates real entities such as robots and automatic mechanisms. In this research we present a series of pilot lessons for an introduction to programming with the help of Lego Mindstorms and the visual programming environment ROBOLAB. The research was carried out on Greek secondary school students in the 9th and 10th grades. We present the initial results, which clearly show the advantages of this environment over the standard ones conventionally used, as well as some problems.

Introducing Secondary Education Students to Algorithms and Programming

In Greece, the development of the teaching of Information Technology (IT) in schools has been greatly influenced by the rapid development of technology, making IT literacy a priority for all individuals. Consequently, the teaching of algorithms and programming, with the ulterior motive of teaching modeling as well as problem solving, has been greatly limited in Secondary Education. However, we strongly believe that algorithms and programming constitute an important intellectual tool and should be included in basic education. In any case, both the research literature findings, as well as, our own experience confirm the fact that novice programmers come up against many mental obstacles in their attempts to understand the functioning of programs or the construction of algorithms. In order to deal with these difficulties and successfully teach the elementary concepts of algorithms and programming, we have developed didactic scenarios, which are based on specially designed educational software. In conjunction with this, we are attempting to develop a program for the systematic training of those students who will become IT teachers in Secondary or Primary Education. The most significant findings of our research are summarized as follows: (a) The development of educational software and its experimental use in the teaching process allow us to formulate several general rules related to the specific didactic characteristics, which these environments should include. (b) Educational software is effective only when it is incorporated within the framework of the didactic scenarios that the teacher organizes and which are supported by the software. (c) Teachers do not spontaneously use educational software in the context of this rationale. Therefore, specific training is required so that they adopt and use such software in didactic scenarios.

WIPE: a programming environment for novices

This paper presents an overview of the design principles and the evaluation of a new programming environment, WIPE (Web Integrated Programming Environment), designed specifically to teach novices the fundamentals of programming. The environment is designed for use in secondary education as a first programming course, in order to help students become familiar with the main programming concepts.

A system for program visualization and problem-solving path assessment of novice programmers

This paper describes an educational programming environment, called AnimPascal. AnimPascal is a program animator that incorporates the ability to record problem-solving paths followed by students. The aim of AnimPascal is to help students understand the phases of developing, verifying, debugging, and executing a program. Also, by recording the different versions of student programs, it can help teachers discover student conceptions about programming. In this paper we describe how our system works and present some empirical results concerning student conceptions when trying to solve a problem of algorithmic or programming nature. Finally, we present our plans for further extensions to our software.

X-compiler: yet another integrated novice programming environment

The paper presents a simple programming language, called X, and an educational programming environment, called X-Compiler, designed to introduce students to programming. X-Compiler can be used to edit, compile, debug and run programs written in X, a subset of Pascal. X-Compiler could be didactically interesting because of the following features: (a) users can watch the intermediate steps of the execution of a program: source code compilation, correspondence of source and pseudo-assembly code during execution, register content, and intermediate values of user and temporary system variables; also, they can edit the produced pseudo-assembly code and re-execute it, (b) there are many detailed and explanatory messages that can guide novice programmers when debugging their programs and, in general, help them write better programs.

Re-designing an OOP course based on BlueJ

In this paper we present our findings on teaching Object Oriented Programming (OOP) with BlueJ in the context of a one-semester programming course. Specifically, we present the evolution of the course, results from its evaluation and proposals for a more effective teaching of OOP. Our proposals focus on the way that the features of BlueJ, the accompanying textbook and the well-known guidelines for teaching object orientation with Java presented by the team of BlueJ should be used, in order to avoid some underlying pitfalls.

Teaching programming with robots: a case study on greek secondary education

The teaching of programming in the Greek education system begins at the secondary level. The aims of the programming syllabus include the attainment of knowledge and skills, which are related to problem solving and the design of algorithms. In order to acquire the students knowledge and skills, the usual approach that is followed is: the use of a programming language of general aim (Pascal, Basic, etc), the use of a professional environment for this programming language, the development of programs that solve problems which treat numbers and symbols. According to researches that have been realized, this approach of teaching programming to beginners constitutes important factor that complicates its learning. In this work we propose a framework of teaching the programming fundamentals to beginners that is based on using LEGO Mindstorms technology. This paper analyzes the results from a pilot research that was carried out on Greek secondary school students.

Post's Machine: A Didactic Microworld as an Introduction to Formal Programming

Although formal programming is considered a recognised programming model, many avoid teaching it because of its very high mental cost. For that reason we developed a “microscopic” environment based on Emil Posts theoretical machine as an introduction to formal methods of programming and in the framework of an introductory computer science course.In this paper, we present a small formal system for the development and simultaneous verification of algorithms; we give an example of problem solving in this environment; we present a small existing software simulating Posts machine; we propose two modules to facilitate the work in this environment; and finally, we present the didactic uses of Posts machine as an introduction to formal methods.

Teaching Introductory Programming Concepts with Lego MindStorms in Greek High Schools: A Two-Year Experience

Even today, teaching the basic principles of programming still presents numerous difficulties for students, which in the last several decades have comprised the subject of extensive research (Mayer, 1989; Mendelsohn et al., 1990; Du Boulay, 1989; Du Boulay et al. 1989; Brusilovsky et al., 1994). On the one hand attempts have been made to investigate the factors that render the learning of programming principles difficult, and on the other, to examine the effectiveness of programming languages and integrated environments, as well as the actual methods applied to the teaching of programming. The difficulties, according to (Du Boulay, 1989; Du Boulay et al. 1989) fall into one of the following categories: 1. Orientation: what programming is; the types of problems that can be solved; the positive effects of learning programming. 2. Notional machine: difficulties in understanding the general properties of the “machine” which the student learns to control and its relation to the physical machine. 3. Rules of the programming language (notation): syntax and semantics as an extension of the properties and behaviour of the notional machine. 4. Learning the established structures. 5. Pragmatics: acquiring the ability to determine, develop, control and debug a program with the available tools. Many researchers agree with the view that one of the most significant factors which contributes or even gives rise to the above-mentioned difficulties is the use of the classic approach (Brusilovsky et al., 1997; Xinogalos, 2002) to the teaching of programming. By this we mean teaching based on: • The use of a general purpose language (such as Pascal, C, etc); • The use of a professional environment for this language; and • The proposed problems that require the processing of numbers and/or symbols. Much research has shown that the problems arising from general-purpose languages are due to the fact that they are complex and novices need to learn a lot in order to be able to

Teaching OOP with BlueJ: A Case Study

In this paper we present our findings on teaching OOP with BlueJ in the context of a one-semester programming course. We organize our findings, i.e., the difficulties, the errors, and the misconceptions that students encounter, in two categories: (a) difficulties attributed to the special characteristics of ......, and, (b) difficulties that may be attributed to the features of the programming environment.