This study used educational software—courseware—that contained algorithm animations and data structure visualizations that were implemented with the programming language Java, and were embedded in a collection of World Wide Web pages. The objective of this study was to determine whether the interactive prediction facility provided by this courseware produced a significant learning advantage. Two experiments were conducted. The results indicated that the students who used the interactive version of the courseware spent significantly more time using it than those who used the noninteractive version. Students who used the interactive version scored better on several of the questions that tested the more difficult lessons, but performed more poorly overall. None of the differences were statistically significant.

Software reuse needs to be taught early in the computer science curriculum. One of the major obstacles that students face when reusing software is the difficulty in learning how to use components from a software library. To aid in understanding components we built a tool that automatically embeds Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) links in Ada 95 specification files. Derived types are linked to their parent types, child packages are linked to their parents, and all subprogram parameter and return types are linked to their declarations. We conducted a controlled experiment to determine if these links help novice programmers to learn to use library components. Researchers have not formally investigated which comprehension techniques are effective and which are not. Our results indicate that our techniques are effective in aiding novice programmers to learn to use a reusable component.

No abstract available.

article Free Access Share on The portable dining philosophers: a movable feast of concurrency and software engineering Author: M. B. Feldman Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DCView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGCSE BulletinVolume 24Issue 1March 1992 pp 276–280https://doi.org/10.1145/135250.134566Online:01 March 1992Publication History 5citation237DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations5Total Downloads237Last 12 Months8Last 6 weeks5 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

No abstract available.

article Free Access Share on SMALL-Ada: personal computer courseware for studying concurrent programming Authors: Michael B. Feldman Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DCView Profile , Arthur Vargas Lopes Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DCView Profile , Manuel Perez Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DCView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGCSE BulletinVolume 22Issue 1Feb. 1990pp 206–211https://doi.org/10.1145/319059.323453Published:01 February 1990Publication History 11citation202DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations11Total Downloads202Last 12 Months28Last 6 weeks9 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

A demonstration-quality graphics-assisted debugger is developed for intertask communication in Ada. Based on the static task-specification diagrams of G. Booch (Software Engineering with Ada, Benjamin/Cummings, 1983), the debugger animates the activity of a collection of communicating tasks, and it runs on a DEC GIGI terminal connected to a VAX 11-780 under TeleSoft's partial Ada compiler. The model has been subjected to empirical validation, using undergraduate students as experimental subjects. Subjects were required to debug erroneous tasking programs using both the graphical debugger and a textual one. It is concluded that although the problems to be addressed in the development and evaluation of a graphical debugging tool for Ada tasks are nontrivial, the benefits could be worth the effort.>

Concurrency is a major trend in computer science; it can be taught from the point of view of operating systems, programming languages, algorithm design, database design, software engineering, systems engineering, and computer architecture. The panel will address the following questions among others: When should students be exposed to concurrency? In traditional or non-traditional courses? How many times? What must a programmer know about implementation? Must applications programmers now become experts in operating systems? What are the appropriate paradigms for development of concurrent programming in education?

A Modula-2-based project series is presented. This three-project sequence is suitable for an undergraduate course in operating systems or systems programming, and embodies the three important principles of concurrent programming, algorithm animation, and code modification. Heavy use is made of the Modula-2 module; much of the code in the projects is given away to the students, who must then adapt it for the purpose. The project series requires the animation of several sort algorithms, which are invoked as independent tasks under Modula-2 and display their state in different screen windows. These projects do not require special hardware and can be run using a “dumb terminal” 24 x 80 screen.

This paper describes a course in Data Structures offered to upper-division undergraduates and beginning graduate students. In addition to the usual data-structures topics, Computer Science 159 places a strong emphasis on software engineering principles, especially the implementation of abstract data types using Ada packages.

The research project in which we are involved seeks to improve the technical climate for experimentation with the human factors of interactive systems by developing tool Kits to aid the experimenter [3,5].These capabilities are in two general areas: languages and metrics to support the specification of user interfaces [1] and the evaluation of them with respect to ergonomic factors; and tools to facilitate the development of user interfaces at moderate cost and with short lead time. The latter area, which we have called “style-independent interactive systems”, or “abstract interaction handlers”, is taken up in this report.

We have been experimenting at The George Washington University with our undergraduate and graduate courses in Data Structures. In particular, we are using a very modern text [HORO78] and a strong emphasis in lectures and projects on the practical application of data abstraction, and its relationship to both structured programming and machine efficiency. Student projects are subroutine packages written, in “real-world” programming languages, as faithful and modular implementations of the abstractions studied.

Automat is an application-oriented programming language for the study of sequential machines represented as generalized transition tables. The system is implemented as an embedded extension of Snobol4, and includes a large number of operations on sets, partitions, and transition tables. A comprehensive utility system for finite-state machines is a major application of the language; programs implementing some recent results in minimization theory are described. Source programs in the intended application area written in AUTOMAT are seen to be substantially shorter than equivalent programs written in general-purpose languages.