Usability evaluation is a crucial step in the iterative software development life-cycle, leading into successful usage of systems. However, most of the usability evaluation methods and tools do not consider all aspects of educational environments. These lacks materialize as unusable results that lead to failures in educational software. Often these results are not comparable and credible, or easily accessible to educators selecting the proper systems for use in their settings. The Technology, Usability, Pedagogy (TUP) evaluation model equally concentrates on the technological, usability, and instructional aspects of educational environments, leading to complete evaluations. In this paper we present the TUP model with the use scenario included and our current WWW prototype of evaluation system based upon it.

No abstract

Program visualization and animation has traditionally been done at the level of the programming language and its implementation in a computer. However, novices do not know these concepts and visualizations that build upon programming language implementation may easily fail in helping novices to learn programming concepts. Metaphor, on the contrary, involves the presentation of a new idea in terms of a more familiar one and can facilitate active learning. This paper applies a metaphor approach to object-oriented programming by presenting new metaphors for such concepts as class, object, object instantiation, method invocation, parameter passing, object reference, and garbage collection. The use of these metaphors in introductory programming education is also discussed.

No abstract

Roles can be assigned to occurrences of variables in programs according to a small number of stereotypical patterns of use. Studies on explicitly teaching roles to novices learning procedural programming have shown that roles are an excellent pedagogical tool for clarifying the structure and meaning of programs and that their use improves students' programming skills. This paper describes the results of an investigation designed to test the understandability and acceptability of the role concept and of the individual roles in novice-level object-oriented programming.The role set used in procedural programming was found to be suitable for describing variable and attribute behavior in object-oriented programming but the need for some supplementary roles-due to the early introduction of linked structures in object-oriented programming-was also identified. CS educators had little problems with identifying roles in typical uses of variables. Every role was identified in typical uses of variables by 70-100 % accuracy. Subjects' comments on the role concept were mostly positive.