Learning memory management with C‐Sim: A C‐based visual tool

Abstract

Nowadays, Computer Science (CS) students must cope with continuous challenges related to programming skill acquisition. In some occasions, they have to deal with the internals of memory management (pointers, pointer arithmetic, and heap management) facing a vision of programming from the low abstraction level offered by C. Even using C++ and references, not all scenarios where objects or collections of objects need to be managed can be covered. Based on the difficulties identified when dealing with such low-level abstractions, the C-Sim application, aimed at learning these concepts in an easy way, has been developed. To support the tool, the C programming language was selected. It allows showing concepts, remaining as close as possible both to the hardware and the operating system. To validate C-Sim, pre and posttests were filled in by a group of 60 first-year CS students, who employed the tool to learn about memory management. Grades of students using C-Sim were also obtained and compared with those that did not use the tool the former academicyear. As main outcomes, 82.26% of students indicated that they had improved programming and memory management knowledge, and 83.64% pointed out that the use of this type of tools improves the understanding and quality of the practice lessons. Furthermore, the marks of students have significantly increased. Finally, C-Sim was designed from the ground up as a learning aid and can be useful for lecturers, who can complement their lessons using interactive demonstrations. Students can also employ it to experiment and learn autonomously.

Investigating the Effect of Interface Scaffolding and Example Design on Learning and Performance in a Code-Tracing Tutor

“…Although visualization tools show the high-level steps related to the execution of a program, they do not show how these were derived (e.g., how the value of a variable was calculated). In spite of this, program visualization tools improve learning over traditional instructional methods (Awasekar, 2013;Hoffswell, Satyanarayan, & Heer, 2018;Kaila, Rajala, Laakso, & Salakoski, 2010;Muldner et al, 2022;Nelson et al, 2017;Perez-Schofield, Rivera, Ortin, & Lado, 2019;Shi, Min, & Zhang, 2017;Yang, Lee, & Chang, 2018). To illustrate with one example, the program visualization tool PlanAni presents variables with metaphors as students use the tool to step through a program (Shi et al, 2017).…”