CRA – CDC Duke Summer Internship 2008

Adventures in Alice Programming for Grades 5 - 12

Gaetjens LezinProfessor Susan H. Rodger

Duke University

IntroductionComputer Science Educational Research

• Sponsored by the National Science Foundation and IBM– NSF Grant ESI-0624642

• Goals– Obtain data about attitudes and how well middle school kids and

teachers are able to learn Alice– Figure out how to use the tool Alice, a 3D virtual worlds

environment with a drag-n-drop interface to teach students in grade 5 – 12 introductory programming

– Attract a diverse group of students to computer science and computing related careers

Presenters

• Professor Susan H. Rodger - Computer Science Professor at Duke University– Director of Alice Workshop 2008 at Duke– rodger@cs.duke.edu

• Don Slater - Computer Science Lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University– dslater@cmu.edu

– Jenna Hayes – Duke University undergraduate

– Ruthie Tucker - Duke University undergraduate

Research Assistants (Alice Team)– Gaetjens Lezin - Binghamton

University undergraduate

– Deborah Nelson - Duke University undergraduate

– Henry Qin - Duke University undergraduate

Previous Work and StatisticsPublications

• Rodger, Susan H. An Innovative Approach with Alice for Attracting K-12 Students to Computing. Recent Paper Publications for Susan H. Rodger. 7 May 2007. 14 July 2008 <http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/rodger/papers/ibmmay07.pdf>.– “According to the Computing Research Association’s fall 2000 report, 23,416 students

selected Computer Science or computer engineering as their intended major”– U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

• expect a 1.15 million rise in the number of IT jobs over the decade 2002-2012• Cooper, Stephen, Wanda Dann, and Randy Pausch. ALICE: A 3-D TOOL FOR INTRODUCTORY

PROGRAMMING CONCEPTS. Apr. 200. July 2008 <http://www.sju.edu/~scooper/alice/ccscne00.pdf>. – “It is easy to say that they do not know how to solve problems. But this is too simplistic.” -

referring to student who are learning intro programming • Cooper, Stephen, Kenneth J. Goldman, Martin Carlisle, Myles McNally, and Viera Proulx. Tools

for Teaching Introductory Programming: What Works? 2006. <http://dsys.cse.wustl.edu/resources/papers/gross-sigcse-2006.pdf>. – “programming with purpose” - refers to animation building with Alice is attractive to kids– “With immediate feedback, we have seen students understand concepts more and our

course can cover more concepts without losing valuable hands-on experience.”

Cont…• Dann, Wanda, Stephen Cooper, and Randy Pausch. Objects: Visualization of

Behavior and State. June 2003. <http://www.sju.edu/~scooper/alice/p109-dann.pdf>.– “Alice is a rapid prototyping environment for 3D object behavior, designed to

make it easy for novice programmers to develop interesting 3D animations and explore interactive 3D graphics”

• Dann, Wanda, and Randy Pausch. Using Visualization To Teach Novices Recursion. July 2001. <http://www.sju.edu/~scooper/alice/p109-dann.pdf>. – “Alice is a convenient and easy-to-use 3-D graphic animation tool that supports

the pedagogical goals of the course, i.e. a fundamental introduction to objects, methods, decision statements, loops and recursion.”

• Rodger, Susan H. An Innovative Approach with Alice for Attracting K-12 Students to Computing. Recent Paper Publications for Susan H. Rodger. 7 May 2007. 14 July 2008 <http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/rodger/papers/ibmmay07.pdf>– “We address the issues of attracting and retaining diverse group of students

(especially women and underrepresented minorities) in computing by teaching students the Alice programming language”

Participating Research Sites

• Durham, North Carolina - Duke University• Virginia Beach, Virginia • San Francisco, California • Denver, Colorado • Charleston, South Carolina • Oxford, Mississippi

Program • Teacher Training camp

– Schedule• June 16 – June 20, 2008• June 23 – June 27, 200• Extended teacher camp and student camp

– July 7 – 11 , 2008– July 14 – 18, 2008

• 35 High School and Middle School teachers• Learn Alice

– Listen to lecture and participate in activity– Create new Alice worlds to demonstrate concepts they have learned

• Alice World Demonstration– Participate in animation shows to present the worlds they create

• Create lesson plans– Must meet North Carolina public school standards– Review and critique each other’s lesson plans

Week 1 Teacher Training Camp Alice Worlds

The Alice Interface and code The Alice Animation

Cont…

Alice World about math to demonstrate translations

Alice World that demonstrates what round, floor, and ceiling functions do

• Example Topics Covered During the Camps – Introduction to using Alice – Motion (translation and rotation) during scene set-up– Problem Solving and Storyboard Design (Participants work on building a

simple Alice storyboard)– Storyboard -> Code – Revisiting translational and rotational motion – Functions (built-in) and parameters – Interactivity and Events – Camera Control – Participants work on building a world for their storyboard – Repetition– 3D Animation Tips– Sound– Group reviews, discussions of storyboards (Storyboards on the wall) – Work Session: Build a world from storyboard (second one)– Animation Fair: Demo of Day 3-4 worlds – etc…

Concepts Taught

Assessment and Data Collection• Obtaining information about • Pretest and posttest

– teachers and students attitude towards computing is a very important part of the research project

– Also test of knowledge on Alice to evaluate what they have learned from the workshop

• Grading and assessment– Completed tests were sent offsite to an evaluator in

Colorado– The results will serve as a main assessment tool for the

research study– The Alice Team at Duke University examined the student

worlds that were made to assess what parts of Alice the students used

Research Data Collection• Database of Students and their Alice World information– Age, Gender

• All tutorial information ex: how complete, extra objects added, general comments

• Information on all the new worlds they created– Type of objects added– Number of objects added– Concepts used and number of times used

• 35 students• 131 Alice worlds made

– All Alice worlds created by students and teacher posted on Alice webpage• http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/alice/aliceInSchools

Charts and Graphs

Chart of tutorial informationNote that a large number students completed each tutorial (noted by the blue bars)

Cont….Detailed graph about the concepts the students used in their worldsNotice more then half the students used camera controls more than 4 times in their worlds

Conclusion

Only time and more research will show if the Alice approach will in fact change the statistics and result in more students entering computing majors and pursuing computer related careers. The Alice Research Project 2008 at Duke University was a small part of a big effort to work towards a total solution for solving the growing problem of attracting and retaining a diverse group of students to computer science and computing careers.