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Students' individual differences in using visualizations: prospects of future research on program visualizations

Author:

Essi LahtinenAuthors Info & Claims

Koli '08: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computing Education Research

Pages 92 - 95

https://doi.org/10.1145/1595356.1595373

Published: 13 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

The range of available visualization tools for programming education is impressive but the research on them is biased mainly on testing the pedagogical effectiveness of the visualization tools. Most of the studies apply empirical techniques in controlled experimentation situations. The results on the field are summarized to be "markedly mixed".

As learning, in constructivist point of view, is seen as a process affected by the individual also the use of visualizations in learning programming depends on the learner. Instead of only studying whether visualizations in general are effective for learning, we should also study in which conditions visualizations are effective for certain kinds of learners. Controlled experimentation is also critizised as a method of studying learning since it creates artificial learning situations that do not reveal the real needs of the learner.

This article presents a literature review on the work carried out in the field of visualizations and analyzes the situation. On the basis of related work, we propose research questions for future work and discussion about research settings and methodology for achieving useful results for developing the field of visualizations further. The aim is that with this ground work we could better utilize the earlier work: visualization tools that have already been developed and the research results related to these tools.

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Cited By

Egan MMcDonald C(2014)Program visualization and explanation for novice C programmersProceedings of the Sixteenth Australasian Computing Education Conference - Volume 14810.5555/2667490.2667496(51-57)Online publication date: 20-Jan-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2667490.2667496
Isohanni EKnobelsdorf MCaspersen MClancy MSanders K(2010)Behind the curtainProceedings of the Sixth international workshop on Computing education research10.1145/1839594.1839610(87-96)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1839594.1839610

Index Terms

Students' individual differences in using visualizations: prospects of future research on program visualizations
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Graphical user interfaces
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

Koli '08: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computing Education Research

November 2008

127 pages

ISBN:9781605583853

DOI:10.1145/1595356

Conference Chairs:
Lauri Malmi,
Arnold Pears

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 13 November 2008

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Koli '08

Koli '08: 8th Koli Calling Int. Conference on Computing Education Research

November 13 - 16, 2008

Koli, Finland

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Cited By

Egan MMcDonald C(2014)Program visualization and explanation for novice C programmersProceedings of the Sixteenth Australasian Computing Education Conference - Volume 14810.5555/2667490.2667496(51-57)Online publication date: 20-Jan-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2667490.2667496
Isohanni EKnobelsdorf MCaspersen MClancy MSanders K(2010)Behind the curtainProceedings of the Sixth international workshop on Computing education research10.1145/1839594.1839610(87-96)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1839594.1839610

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