Computer science instruction assisted by a visualization tool

Serie : Lecture notes in engineering and computer scienceOne of the several difficulties novice undergraduates experience in applying programming fundamentals is mastering the meaning of running programs. Because of these difficulties, students lack involvement for Computer Science (CS) introductory courses; and the latter are associated with high drop-out rates. Integrating a program visualization tool into an environment that tends to facilitate learning helps novice undergraduates to build a clear mental model for understanding the behavior of running programs. This may improve the involvement of students for those courses. Using two different editions of the same CS introductory module, this pilot study portrays the changes from an unassisted to a visualization tool assisted program-completion approach. The results in terms of success, failure, and drop-out are given and the impact of introducing this tool on student involvement in learning is analyzed. The author discusses implications of the assisted implementation for the classroom and pays attention to some of its drawbacks.(undefined