The Use of Animation as an Educational Tool Research in CS-Education

1. The Use of Animation asan Educational Tool Research in CS-Education Ronit Ben-Bassat Levy Department of Science Teaching Weizmann Institute of Science - Israel

2. Introduction • The Problem -Students have difficulties in understanding concepts of algorithms and programming. • Claim - These difficulties are rooted in the lack of a viable mental model of how a computer works. • Previous work

3. Research Design • What is Understanding ? • Pascal explained by Jeliot (Java tool). • Long term research. • Changing Jeliot I. • Choosing the classes. • Methode of teaching. • Evaluating the results.

4. Levels of Understanding • Retrieve factual information. • Implementation Understanding. • Analysis. • Synthesis. • Abstruction.

5. Changes in Jeliot I • A single window with two panels - code and animation. • All variables are animated. • Full evaluation of expression and control decisions. • VCR - like controls. • Animation of I/O.

6. Research Type • Action reserch. • Comparing between two groups. • Comparing the levels of understanding.

7. Teching Sequence • New concept was studied for two weeks. • In - class assignment - pre - test. • Additional study - Control - Turbo Pascal - Animation - Java and Jeliot 2000. • In - class assignment - post - test. • Interviews. • Teacher available for questions.

8. Analyzation tools • Quantitative tools- each In - class assignment was analyzed separately, comparing the control group with the animation group according to: averages, normalization. • Comparing each In - classes results separately according to students’ ability: strong, mediocre and weak levels.

9. Analyzation tools • Qualitative - interviews - comparing the groups and students’ levels. • Giving verbal explanations for the execution of program.

10. Results - Quantitative tools • Control group stronger than the animation group from the beginning. • First significant improvement for the animation group in the If-statement. This continues through all rest of questionnaires. • The normalized results shoed that the control group could have improved more.

11. Results - Qualitative tools • Interviews - revealed attitudes and way of thinking.Students like the Jeliot 2000 animation system. • The stronger students of both groups gave the correct answers but they were not sure about it. • The mediocre students drew Jeliot 2000 display and used its’ verbal explanations to simulate execution of the program.

12. The mediocre student effect • The mediocre students profit the most from the use of animation. According to the average results and the normalized ones. • Interviews - quicker than all others.

13. Special assinments • Summary assignment - at the end of the year. • Follow - up assignment - after the first trimester of the second year.

14. Results - Special assinments • The animation group used different and better vocabulary offered by Jeliot 2000. • In the follow-up assignment the animation group students used step-by-step methode of explanations, using symboles from Jeliot 2000.

15. Analizing the understanding • Each question in the in - class assignment was analized according to level of understanding. • The animation helped mostly in the retreival, implementation and analysis levels.

16. Conclusions • The animation helpes when it is used in a long-term period and in a step-by-step way. • The animation helped mostly in the retreival, implementation and analysis levels.

17. Conclusions • The mediocre students profit from the use of animation. • The animation helped building a useful vocabulary, and a model of the way the computer works during the execution of a program.

18. Thank you