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• Stephen Cooper
• Stanford University
• coopers_at_stanford.edu
• 2 July, 2012

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Overview

• Background declining CS enrollments
• Past and Present work with Alice
• Program Visualization
• Description of Alice
• Demo
• Results from NSF studies
• How Alice is being used
• Alice Support for teachers
• Future work with Alice
• Alice 3.0
• QA

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US National Science Foundation support for Alice
work

• NSF 0126833 CCLI EMD Proof of Concept
• NSF 0302542 ATE
• NSF 0339734 CCLI Project
• NSF 0511940 ASA
• NSF 0618461 CCLI Level 2
• NSF 0624654 ITEST
• NSF 0736697 CCLI Phase 1
• NSF 0724890 CISE special project
• NSF 1031351 ITEST Scale-Up
• NSF 1021975 CCLI Level 2

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Background

• Declining student enrollments
• High attrition in introductory computing classes

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The Shrinking CS pool
Women and minorities are making up an increasing
percentage of undergraduate student populations
According to the Taulbee survey, the total number
of students dropped to 1 in 2005, and held
steady at 1 for 2006-2009
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Attrition in introductory computing

• Dropout rate in first year
• Informal surveys 30 70
• Typically 35 50
• Especially high for women and minorities (women
  receive fewer than 20 of the Bachelors degrees
  in computing)
• In 2011, the number was 12 (see the Taulbee
  survey for more details)

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Why? Possible reasons

• Adding object-oriented concepts to first year
  courses has increased the number of topics to be
  covered.
• increased teacher prep time
• increased student frustration
• The way we teach programming has not really
  changed in the past 25 years

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Game Plan

• Develop an innovative instructional approach to
  develop intuitive understanding of
• Fundamental programming concepts
• Sequence
• Decisions
• Repetition
• Methods and parameters
• OOP concepts
• objects and classes
• encapsulation
• methods and parameters
• inheritance

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Visualization in CS

• The use of graphics in teaching CS concepts has
  taken three major forms
• Algorithm Animation
• Simulation
• Program Visualization

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Program Visualization

• Program visualization allows a student to write a
  program and view a visual representation of
  execution
• Primary use has been for introducing math and
  programming concepts
• Examples Logo, Karel the Robot

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The Alice Software

• A 3D interactive animation environment
• A program visualization tool
• The program state is visible to the student
• State changes are animated
• A tool for teaching fundamental programming
  concepts
• object oriented

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Alice features

• Uses 3D graphics to engage students
• Has a smart drag-and-drop editor that prevents
  syntax errors
• Appeals to wide audience
• Storytelling
• (young women, minority students)
• Interactive computer games
• (young men)

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Alice Features

• Makes objects something students can see and
  relate to
• Has a java syntax mode to ease the transition to
  C/Java/VB.net

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Our pedagogic approach

• Emphasize design using storyboards
• Program objects-early or objects-first
• Agnostic with respect to the early introduction
  of classes
• Allow an (optional) early introduction to events

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Alice Demo

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Alice language features

• Objects are stateful, but manipulation of state
  is limited to a set of primitive functions
• Challenges of teaching state transformations and
  functions
• Separation of the functional and imperative
  aspects of the language, like Algol
• Algol "is a language so far ahead of its time,
  that it was not only an improvement on its
  predecessors, but also on nearly all its
  successors (Tony Hoare)

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NSF Proof of Concept study High Risk Students

• We examined historical data at Ithaca College and
  Saint Josephs University for 5 years
• Found that
• Percentage of women in CS classes is typically
  low
• Students at high risk of DWF
• Have little or no previous programming experience
• Are not ready for calculus

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Results of Proof of Concept study

• As used towards retention of CS majors
• GPA in CS1 improved
• Grades went from C to B
• at-risk students (students with little to no
  prior programming experience and/or weak
  mathematics background)
• Increased retention into CS2 from 47 to 88
• Improved attitudes towards computing

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Completed NSF-sponsored Alice (education) projects

• Proof-of-concept
• study of the use of 3D animated program
  visualization to introduce programming concepts
  to high risk students
• CCLI Project
• Extend study to other colleges universities
  with varying student backgrounds, demographics,
  courses
• ATE
• Modify approach for community college environment
  students

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Current NSF-sponsored Alice (education) projects

• CCLI level 2
• Combining Alice with Media Computation (developed
  by M. Guzdial at Ga. Tech) in CS1
• ITEST
• Providing professional development and assistance
  to high school and middle school teachers in 6
  regions with incorporating Alice into their
  curricula
• ITEST Scale-Up

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Current NSF-sponsored Alice (education) projects

• ITEST
• Results from pilot in Va Beach
• More than tripling of students taking intro to
  computing class
• Tripling of students taking AP CS A
• Interesting anecdotal results with students
  having high-functioning forms of autism
• Current (ITEST Scale-Up)
• 750 HS and MS teachers (in NC, SC, MS)
• K-12/higher education partnerships

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How Alice is being used

• In pre-CS1
• course for majors and students considering a CS
  major
• As a conceptual introduction in CS1
• The Introduction to programming course
• non-majors
• attract students to become CS majors
• In computer literacy
• problem-solving component
• In Pre-AP in high schools
• In various capacities at middle school

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Alice usage

• In any given term, 200 colleges are using LTPWA)
• Alice has been likely used in gt 1000 high schools
  (self-reporting)
• Increasing adoption in UK, Costa Rica, Brazil,
  Taiwan and other countries

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Alice support for teachers

• Websites with access to curricular materials
• Alice teacher professional development (generally
  in summer)
• Alice teacher communities (e-mail
  dslater_at_andrew.cmu.edu)

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Where to go for curricular ideas

• www.aliceprogramming.net
• http//www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice09/
• http//www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice/aliceInSchools/
• There are several others
• http//www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
• etc.

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www.aliceprogramming.net

• What youll find
• Sample syllabi
• Solutions to chapter exercises/projects
• 3D Models
• Sample student projects
• Sample tests

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www.aliceprogramming.net

• Strengths
• Complete and organized courses/curricula
• Materials are often used as is
• Appropriate for college and HS
• Weaknesses
• Not as usable for younger students
• Not ready for informal education

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http//www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice09

• What youll find
• Tutorials (but not stencils)
• Videos of Alice worlds
• Example worlds

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http//www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice09

• Strengths
• Excellent start-up materials
• Useful for middle and high school
• Good for informal education
• Weaknesses
• Many of the tutorials are not problem-based
  they tend to focus more on the mechanics of how
  to do something
• The teacher still must incorporate these
  materials into a course/unit/lesson

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Future Alice versions

• Alice 3.0
• Includes (EA) SIMS 3D models
• And their (the Sims) existing primitive
  animations
• As will include many useful primitives such as
  walk and touch
• Has the ability to generate Java code
• Provide its own Java IDE (within Netbeans)
• Available from www.alice.org/3

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Demo Alice 3

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Questions?

• Steve Cooper
• coopers_at_stanford.edu