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How to use Algorithm Visualizations in Your Class

Learn how to effectively incorporate algorithm visualizations into your classes, overcome impediments, and engage students in interactive learning experiences. Explore the benefits, challenges, and best practices of using AVs, based on survey results and community feedback.

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How to use Algorithm Visualizations in Your Class

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  1. How to use Algorithm Visualizations in Your Class Cliff Shaffer Virginia Tech Susan Rodger Duke University Tom Naps University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Steve Edwards Virginia Tech

  2. Workshop Schedule • Shaffer: Impediments, AlgoViz, interactivity • Naps: JHAVE, quizzing • Break • Rodger: JFLAP in the classroom • Edwards: AVs in CS2 • Questions Session/AV Playtime

  3. Get Acquainted • Who’s who • Have you used an AV for a class?

  4. Survey Results: Interest • Taken during SIGCSE 2010 • Warning: Self-selected responders • Are AVs useful? • Strongly Agree: 12 • Agree: 17 • Neutral: 1 • A (bare) majority indicated that they used some sort of visualization with class

  5. Survey: Impediments to Use • Lack of knowledge/time to find good AVs: 13 • Time to make good AVs: 2 • Difficulty integrating in class: 9 • Lack of time within class constraints: 2 • Uncertainty about quality outcomes: 1 • Content not relevant to my classes: 1

  6. Difficulty Integrating in Class • Why is this so hard? • Problems: • Compatibility with existing materials • Class time • Your effort

  7. Levels of Use • Lecture aide: Just pick a couple to try • Self-serve tutorial or exercise at home • Lab session • Light quizzing: Self study • Heavy quizzing: collect and send to instructor (JHAVE, TRAKLA) • A section of material: Ex: Hashing tutorial • Integrated into a full course: JFLAP

  8. Help from/for the Community • http://algoviz.org/ • Build a community of users/developers • Better disseminate best practices information • Project Support • NSF CCLI grant • NSF NSDL grant • Connections to NSDL/Ensemble project

  9. AlgoViz.org • A collection of links to over 500AVs • Annotated bibliography of over 500 papers • Forums, field reports • OpenAlgoViz

  10. AlgoViz Tour

  11. AlgoViz Site Traffic

  12. AlgoViz Awards • Community-building exercise • Solicited votes from the public on a slate of nominees • Six winners • Hall of Fame: 6+1 • Adding more for 2011 • To be announced at the NSF showcase session on Friday morning

  13. Levels of Interactivity • Pure animation/slide show • Sorting out Sorting • Step-through • Most AVs today • Quizzing • JHAVE is step-through + quizzing • User-directed walkthrough • TRAKLA • Exploration • Tutorials

  14. My Classroom Experiences (1) • My life as an AV researcher is divorced from my life as an instructor! • Been intending for years to use AVs more in my Data Structures course and my senior Algorithms course

  15. My Classroom Experiences (2) • Until recently, only sporadic use • Hashing tutorial excepted, since that was driven by a “research” agenda. But that worked well! • This semester, frequent use of AVs in lecture • Binary Treesome • TRAKLA: Heaps, BST • Auckland Huffman Coding • VT Union/Find

  16. Case Study: VT Hashing Tutorial • One week of material on hashing • Can replace lecture and textbook • Drop in place, a complete unit • Study: in-class study vs. lecture • Significantly better performance on post test for tutorial group

  17. AV Sampler • Animal Backtracking (Tutorial/slideshow) • Union/Find (lecture aide/step through) • Binary Treesome (interactive) • TRAKLA Heaps (Tutorial/interactive) • VT Hashing (Tutorial, “test mode”, exploration) • Algorithms in Action: Quicksort

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