A learning tool for the visualization of general directed or undirected rooted trees

摘要

This paper presents a new learning tool developed for the visualization of general directed and undirected rooted trees. This visualization tool for teaching graph and network algorithms provides an interactive view of the subject being taught to the students. The tool is designed for three different groups of users: developers, instructors and students. It could be used for the visualization of any algorithm that generates a sequence of trees. This new tool minimizes the instructor's effort and gives him the possibility of drawing trees easily with many different properties. It can be used efficiently in courses like Graph Theory or Network Programming or in an introductory course like Algorithms and Data Structures. We believe that this tool will be an effective supplement to traditional classroom education. It is a commonly accepted fact that teaching can be vastly amplified when it is done visually and interactively instead of in the traditional way. Therefore, a summary of other educational tools concerning tree drawing is presented. Benefits and drawbacks are thoroughly described in order to support the efficiency of modern learning technology.