The Use of Animation as an Educational Tool Research in CS-Education Ronit Ben-Bassat Levy Department of Science Teaching Weizmann Institute of Science - Israel

Introduction The Problem - Students have difficulties in understanding concepts of algorithms and programming. Claim - These difficulties are rooted in the lack of a viable mental model of how a computer works. Previous work

Research Design What is Understanding ? Pascal explained by Jeliot (Java tool). Long term research. Changing Jeliot I. Choosing the classes. Methode of teaching. Evaluating the results.

Levels of Understanding Retrieve factual information. Implementation Understanding. Analysis. Synthesis. Abstruction.

Changes in Jeliot I A single window with two panels - code and animation. All variables are animated. Full evaluation of expression and control decisions. VCR - like controls. Animation of I/O.

Research Type Action reserch. Comparing between two groups. Comparing the levels of understanding.

Teching Sequence New concept was studied for two weeks. In - class assignment - pre - test. Additional study - Control - Turbo Pascal - Animation - Java and Jeliot 2000. In - class assignment - post - test. Interviews. Teacher available for questions.

Analyzation tools Quantitative tools - each In - class assignment was analyzed separately, comparing the control group with the animation group according to: averages, normalization. Comparing each In - classes results separately according to students’ ability: strong, mediocre and weak levels.

Analyzation tools Qualitative - interviews - comparing the groups and students’ levels. Giving verbal explanations for the execution of program.

Results - Quantitative tools Control group stronger than the animation group from the beginning. First significant improvement for the animation group in the If-statement. This continues through all rest of questionnaires. The normalized results shoed that the control group could have improved more.

Results - Qualitative tools Interviews - revealed attitudes and way of thinking. Students like the Jeliot 2000 animation system. The stronger students of both groups gave the correct answers but they were not sure about it. The mediocre students drew Jeliot 2000 display and used its’ verbal explanations to simulate execution of the program.

The mediocre student effect The mediocre students profit the most from the use of animation. According to the average results and the normalized ones. Interviews - quicker than all others.

Special assinments Summary assignment - at the end of the year. Follow - up assignment - after the first trimester of the second year.

Results - Special assinments The animation group used different and better vocabulary offered by Jeliot 2000. In the follow-up assignment the animation group students used step-by-step methode of explanations, using symboles from Jeliot 2000.

Analizing the understanding Each question in the in - class assignment was analized according to level of understanding. The animation helped mostly in the retreival, implementation and analysis levels.

Conclusions The animation helpes when it is used in a long-term period and in a step-by-step way. The animation helped mostly in the retreival, implementation and analysis levels.

Conclusions The mediocre students profit from the use of animation. The animation helped building a useful vocabulary, and a model of the way the computer works during the execution of a program.

Thank you