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Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School

Aurora Vizcaíno & Manuel PrietoEscuela Superior de Informática de

Ciudad RealUniversidad de Castilla-La Mancha

(ES) http://oreto.inf-

cr.uclm.es

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Improving some uses of New Technologies in Programming Learningat Higher Education

Aurora Vizcaíno & Manuel PrietoEscuela Superior de Informática de

Ciudad RealUniversidad de Castilla-La Mancha

(ES)http://oreto.inf-cr.uclm.es

3 TICE´2000 Troyes Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School M.Prieto, A. Vizcaíno

Résumé

• Probleme. Aprentisage et enseigement de l´informtique a l´universté. Formation des habilités en programation.

• Abordage. Sistemes bases en la colaboration et le conisance. Incorporation du concept d´etudiant virtuel.

• Une solution. HabiPro, un programme de collaboration et distribué, conçu pour former habilities de programation des étudiants au niveau d'université.

• Résultats. Obtenus à partir d'une expérience effectuée en utilisant HabiPro.

• Notre groupe ORETO• CINTEC Aveiro, Juillet 2001

4 TICE´2000 Troyes Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School M.Prieto, A. Vizcaíno

Summary

• Problem. Learning and teaching computing at University level. Developing skills in Computer Programming.

• Approach. Knowledge and cooperative based systems. Incorporating the concept of Virtual Student

• One solution. HabiPro a collaborative and distributed program designed to help in developing skills in programming students at university level.

• Results. Obtained from an experiment carried out using HabiPro

• Our group ORETO• CINTEC Aveiro, July 2001

5 TICE´2000 Troyes Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School M.Prieto, A. Vizcaíno

The problem: Learning to Program

• Programming is a difficult topic to learn and to teach.• To teach because there are many abstract concepts

like recursion or data structures. Teachers have problems to to find clear examples.

• To learn because programming is (generally in first courses) a procedural discipline– Declarative knowledge is assumed to be easy to

obtain, and skills acquisition difficult to acquire. Anderson 1983

• Procedural disciplines must be learnt « by doing »• Collaboration forces the development of self-regulatory

skills; to explain opinions, articulate reasoning and other advantages.

6 TICE´2000 Troyes Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School M.Prieto, A. Vizcaíno

Programming as a Discipline

• 1968 ACM First orientations (From Mathematics)• 1975 IEEE Electric and Electronic Engineering• Curriculum’78 ACM. Programming and Programming

architecture• 1983 IEEE Program in Computer Science &

Engineering. Accreditation Board for Engineering & Technology.

• 1990. Software Engineering IEEE and CMU• 2000 Software Engineering Coordinating Committee

ACM- IEEE: SWEBOK. SW-E a recognised profession with a Body of Knowledge (http://www.swebok.org)

7 TICE´2000 Troyes Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School M.Prieto, A. Vizcaíno

The discipline of programming in our conditions

• Concienciar al alumno de los cambios en su entorno• Darle una visión global de la Programación• Propiciar el aprendizaje de fundamentos transferibles• Dar preferencia al desarrollo de habilidades• Equilibrio cantidad - profundidad• Integrar áreas no propiamente informáticas• Máxima importancia al trabajo práctico• Estimular el trabajo en grupos.

8 TICE´2000 Troyes Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School M.Prieto, A. Vizcaíno

Two main ideas applicable in Programming Learning

• The construction of the concept is creative and not a mechanic and passive process. A concept emerges and is formed in a middle of a complex operation oriented to solve some problem.

Lev. S. Vygotsky• Obviously, in order to promote the

functioning of the intelligence, it must be motivated by an affective force. Jean Piaget

9 TICE´2000 Troyes Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School M.Prieto, A. Vizcaíno

Introductory Programming course (Last year)Registered Examined Passed 339 131 82

Erroneous behaviours in new students

• They use mainly button-up solutions• They tend to abuse of control structures• They don´t evaluate the importance of

correct definitions of data types before coding.

• Some processes become particularly difficult to be adapted because of previously acquired skills from other formal disciplines. Example recursion.

10 TICE´2000 Troyes Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School M.Prieto, A. Vizcaíno

Approach

• Learning by doing• Cooperation• Virtual student• Developing Skills

11 TICE´2000 Troyes Examining the Effectiveness of New Technology in High School M.Prieto, A. Vizcaíno

Previous solutions

• Systems – Lisp Tutor (Anderson & Reiser)

– LAURA (Adam & Laurent)– PROUST (Johnson)– Ceilidh (Benford)– COACH (Secker)– CAPRA (verdejo).

• Mainly centred in:– Correcting student´s bugs

– Helping them to develop correct programs– Focus in syntactic and semantic mistakes

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Proposal: Habi Pro

• Habi Pro (Habitos en Programación) is conceived as a SW Product designed to help in developing good habits in Computer Programming.

• Habi Pro is:– Distributed– Collaborative– Adaptive

• Habi Pro tries:– To train students to create and debug efficient programs

by themselves– To help students to develop good Programming habits

including stile

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HabiPro interface

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Experiment

• Subjects – The subjects were forty-six students from the First course – in Programming. Their ages were between eighteen – and twenty, and they didn’t have any previous knowledge – in Programming.

• Methodology and Procedure– The experiment was divided into two sessions with – twenty-three students in each session. – In both sessions students had to try to solve twenty – exercises in group. – The maximum time to resolve the exercises was an hour.

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Group Members Exercises doneA 3 10B 2 8C 3 15D 2 16E 2 15F 3 15G 4 10H 2 7I 2 16

Exercises done in the first session

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Group Members Exercises doneA 3 19B 2 18C 3 10D 2 17E 2 15F 3 17G 4 9H 2 11I 2 16

Exercises solved in the second session

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Discussion

Observing the two tables presented and comparing the average number of exercises solved by the groups who used HabiPro (14,6 exercises) and the average calculated in the first session (12,4) we can deduce that using HabiPro students solved more exercises.

On the other hand we calculated the statistical Eta in order to study whether there was any relation between the two variables (number of exercises done and user or non-use of the tool). We obtained an Eta value equal to 0.30 for the variable ‘number of exercises done’ and a value of 0.73 for the variable ‘use or non-use of the tool’.

Experiment

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Observing the second table, we can see that the group withless exercises done was the group formed of four people (group G), so we asked ourselves the reason for this. We studied the conversations stored in HabiPro. The group G conversation showed many sentences such as: Why don’t you answer? or Why don’t you propose anything?, that proved that the collaboration in this group wasn’t sufficient .

Experiment

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Some data indicates that groups formed of four or more studentscould have communication and collaboration problems when they are working with HabiPro. During the experiment we could see that when there were two students working with HabiPro the collaboration was really good. The groups formed of three students, in the majority of the cases, worked by collaborating, although in some groups students commented the teacher that there was a person whonever collaborated. So we think now for the future, that the best number of studentsto collaborate using HabiPro is two. With more persons the collaboration begins to decrease.

Experiment

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Conclusions

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Comunidad Autónoma de Castilla-La Mancha Area: 79,000 Km 2Population: 1,700,000 Hab

Universidad de Castilla-La ManchaFounded: 19856 Campuses in 5 provinces35,000 Students

Escuela Universitaria de Informática

1-2-3 cycles 7 Research Groups

SW quality & metricsSW-HW Co-designComputer Aided Learning

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Main Interest: Knowledge based systems• Human and artificial learning• Knowledge extraction from mass data • Fuzzy Knowledge• Movement capture and analysis• Co-operative and Knowledge based learning systems Staff• 8 Lecturers ( 3 Drs ), scholars and students

Laboratory • Laboratorio de Captura de Movimiento (Motion Capture)

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Universidade de Aveiro (PT)Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha (ES)

Presentation of models, tools and applications as instructional aids using New Technologies (not only Computer related) in Science Learning.

Deadline for Submission: 1 May 2001Call for papers & details in http://www.mat.ua.pt/cintec

International Conference on New Technologies in Science Education Aveiro, Portugal July 4 - 6 2001