Effectiveness of Program Visualization: A Case Study with the ViLLE Tool

Abstract

Executive SummaryProgram visualization is one of the various methods developed over the years to aid novices with their difficulties in learning to program. It consists of different graphical -often animated -and textual objects, visualizing the execution of programs. The aim of program visualization is to enhance students' understanding of different areas of program execution. Typical program visualization techniques include code highlighting, visualization of the call stack, and presenting information on variables. Despite the large number of studies performed on program visualization, little is known about the effects of such systems on learning.We have developed a program visualization tool called ViLLE, with the main objective of offering an environment for students to study the execution of example programs -whether written by students themselves or prepared by the teacher -and explore the changes in the program state data structures. A key feature of ViLLE is language independency, including parallel execution of a program in two different languages and the ability to define new languages. ViLLE also provides role information of program variables and supports the design and use of interactive pop-up questions.In this paper, we report and discuss the results of a study on the effectiveness of ViLLE. The research was conducted on university students in their first programming course. Students participated in a two hour session in a computer class, where they were randomly divided into two groups. T he control group used only traditional textual material during the session, whereas for the treatment group, the same material was extended with interactive examples using ViLLE. With this research setting, we tried to answer two research questions: " Does ViLLE help students in learning to program?", and "Is there any difference in learning when previous programming experience is taken into account?" We found some support for a positive answer to the first question, although we couldn't fully reject the null hypothesis. For the second question, we obtained solid evidence that ViLLE enhances the learning of students with no prior programming experience substantially, so that the statistical differences between the novices and the more experienced learners disappeared as a result of a single training session. This indicates that program visualization indeed improves novice students' learning.

Seamless Merging of Hypertext and Algorithm Animation

“…AV systems using this method include Win-HIPE [Urquiza-Fuentes and Velázquez-Iturbide 2007], JAWAA [Akingbade et al 2003], LeonardoWeb [Bonifaci et al 2005], ViLLE [Rajala et al 2008], TRAKLA2 ] and Ross's hypertextbooks [Ross and Grinder 2002]. In addition, there are a multitude of topic-specific animations implemented as applets.…”

Computer-assisted learning in primary school mathematics using ViLLE education tool

“…The learning results using ViLLE tool have been studied in the field of program visualization and there are a lot of encouraging results on the effectiveness of ViLLE. Programming and mathematics have a lot of similarities, and the exercises developed for this study follow the same principles of visualization and immediate feedback that previously studied programming exercises use [12], [13], [14], [30].…”

“…Combination of the strong knowledge from both sides is used to develop applications, which are good from both the educational and the information technological perspectives. Some of the features discussed in this study, including automated assessment and immediate feedback, are already built into ViLLE [12], [13], [14], [30]. These features are utilized in the exercises according to education sciences.…”

Experience applying language processing techniques to develop educational software that allow active learning methodologies by advising students

“…Thus, COALA (Jurado et al, 2009(Jurado et al, , 2012, uses fuzzy logic to assess programming assignments by comparing the tutor's ideal solution with that delivered by the students, taking into account the imprecision while implementing it. Also, ViLLE Tool (Rajala et al, 2008) includes techniques and mechanisms to provide automatic assessment and feedback. However, these tools are not used in user-defined domain courses.…”