EVALUATION OF LEARNER ENGAGEMENT IN PROGRAM VISUALIZATION

摘要

Engagement taxonomy is used in categorizing learner’srninvolvement in an education situation includingrnvisualization. We conducted a research on the effects ofrnengagement level in program visualization. The studentsrnattended a two hour lab session where they learned basicrnprogramming concepts using a programming tutorial. Thernresults were analyzed based on the engagement level: thernno-viewing group used only the tutorial, while thernviewing and responding groups were able to utilize arnprogram visualization tool called ViLLE. The resultsrnshow that each group performed significantly better at thernend of the session. Moreover, when taking previousrnprogramming experience into account, the novices in thernresponding group improved their results more thanrnnovices in other groups. The statistically significantrndifference between them and more experienced studentsrndisappeared at the end of the session, while in the otherrngroups the difference remained. This seems to support thernhypothesis by Naps et al. [1]: the higher the level ofrnengagement, the better the learning.