Do algorithm animations assist learning?

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Do algorithm animations assist learning?: an empirical study and analysis

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Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems archive
Proceedings of the INTERACT '93 and CHI '93 conference on Human factors in computing systems table of contents

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Pages: 61 - 66

Year of Publication: 1993

ISBN:0-89791-575-5

Authors

John Stasko	Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Albert Badre	Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Clayton Lewis	Institute of Cognitive Science, Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO

Sponsors

NGI : Dutch Computer Soc - Nederlands Genoostschapvoor Informatica
Human Factors Soc : Human Factors Society
IEEE-CS : Computer Society
IFIP : International Federation for Information Processing
SIGCAPH: ACM SIGCAPH Computers and the Physically Handicapped
SIGGRAPH: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
SIGGROUP: ACM Special Interest Group on Supporting Group Work
Austrian Comp Soc : Austrian Computer Society
SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

ACM New York, NY, USA

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Downloads (6 Weeks): 4, Downloads (12 Months): 70, Citation Count: 37

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ABSTRACT

Algorithm animations are dynamic graphical illustrations of computer algorithms, and they are used as teaching aids to help explain how the algorithms work. Although many people believe that algorithm animations are useful this way, no empirical evidence has ever been presented supporting this belief. We have conducted an empirical study of a priority queue algorithm animation, and the study's results indicate that the animation only slightly assisted student understanding. In this article, we analyze those results and hypothesize why algorithm animations may not be as helpful as was initially hoped. We also develop guidelines for making algorithm animations more useful in the future.

REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

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	Christopher D. Hundhausen , Jonathan L. Brown, What You See Is What You Code: A "live" algorithm development and visualization environment for novice learners, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, v.18 n.1, p.22-47, February, 2007
	David Jackson , Ian G. Morton, Algorithm animation of neural networks, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.28 n.SI, p.39-41, 1996
	Micaela Esteves , António Mendes, OOP-Anim, a system to support learning of basic object oriented programming concepts, Proceedings of the 4th international conference conference on Computer systems and technologies: e-Learning, p.573-579, June 19-20, 2003, Rousse, Bulgaria
	Marc Brown , John Domingue , Blaine Price , John Stasko, Software visualization: a CHI '94 workshop, ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, v.26 n.4, p.32-35, Oct. 1994
	Peter Gordon McDonald, Using algorithm animations to assist teaching state space search: an empirical evaluation, Proceedings of the Australasian conference on Computing education, p.174-181, December 2000, Melbourne, Australia
	James E. Baker , Isabel F. Cruz , Giuseppe Liotta , Roberto Tamassia, A new model for algorithm animation over the WWW, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), v.27 n.4, p.568-572, Dec. 1995
	Thomas L. Naps , Eric Bressler, A multi-windowed environment for simultaneous visualization of related algorithms on the World Wide Web, ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, v.30 n.1, p.277-281, Mar. 1998
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	Huw Dawkes , Lisa A. Tweedie , Bob Spence, VICKI: the VIsualisation Construction KIt, Proceedings of the workshop on Advanced visual interfaces, May 27-29, 1996, Gubbio, Italy
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