Visual Approach for Teaching Programming Concepts

The level of difficulty of the first programming course students face has increased considerably when the switch from C++ to Java was made. In an effort to decrease attrition rates and to recruit more students to computer science, the Computer Science Department at California Lutheran University introduced CS0, the pre CS1 course. With restructuring of CS0, the 3D animation software Alice was chosen. Alice, developed by Carnegie Mellon University, is object oriented programming using 3D objects in animation by using a drag-and-drop editor. It is designed to be a student’s first exposure to programming. This paper presents experience of using Alice in CS0 for both traditional students and evening adult students. Alice was more effective with traditional students than with evening adult students. Index Terms – Alice, Concepts of Programming, ObjectOriented, Three Dimension Animation Tools.