Gild Del Myers and Elizabeth Hargreaves Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment

Project Participants University of Victoria Margaret-Anne Storey, Daniela Damian, Daniel German, Mary Sanseverino, Jeff Michaud, Adrian Damian, Del Myers, Elizabeth Hargreaves, Glen Kiessling Dalhousie University Karen Parker MIT Derek Rayside IBM Marin Litoiu, Marcellus Mindel Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Motivation Dr. Storey and other instructors’ teaching experiences: -Students don’t get enough practice coding -Current programming environments tend to be either too complex or too simplistic for novices -Current tools separate the learning environment from the programming environment Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Standalone Eclipse Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Requirements Gathering Student surveys Faculty and TA focus groups Informal brainstorming of potential features—drawing on group experiences as students and instructors Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Approach Why use Eclipse? -Highly configurable -Extensive Java Development Toolkit -Transition to professional IDE -Open Source Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Plug-in Description Designed for two groups of people Student Requirements: -Simple -Robust -Support education Teacher and Assistant Requirements: -Teaching -Communication -Coursework Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Demo… Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Students Simple -Reduced number of actions -Easy running and debugging Robust -Full-featured Java environment -Lots of feedback -Configurable Support for Education -Communication between students and educators -Documentation Support transition from novice to expert Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Teachers and Assistants Teaching -Seamless integration between abstract and concrete course material -Repository of reusable materials Communication - Web features for examples and notes Coursework - Transmission of assignments - Marking of assignments Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Implementation Support in Eclipse -Easy to add features through extension points -Good documentation and source code -Good resources (newsgroups, etc.) -Leveraging other plug-ins from the Eclipse community Hurdles -Difficult to remove features -Difficult to set defaults -Difficult to access some useful API -Limited network support Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Future Endeavours More collaborative support Visualization tools Java “Workbooks” Repository of resources according to topic and lecture Collaborating and learning from other research projects Tell us what you would like! Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003

Contacts and Downloads Eclipse Web site: Gild Web site: Team Contact: Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey Gild Support: Mary Sanseverino Gild: Groupware Enabled Integrated Learning and Development Environment CASCON 2003