Title
Experimental evaluation of animated-verifying object viewers for Java
Abstract
Although many visualization techniques have been shown to be pedagogically effective, they are still not widely adopted. The reasons include: lack of suitable methods of automatic-generation of visualizations, lack of integration among visualizations, and lack of integration with basic integrated development environment (IDE) support. To effectively use visualizations when developing code, it is useful to automatically generate multiple synchronized views without leaving the IDE. The jGRASP IDE provides object viewers that automatically generate dynamic, state-based visualizations of objects and primitive variables in Java. Such seamless integration of a lightweight IDE with a set of pedagogically effective software visualizations is unique and is currently unavailable in any other environment. Multiple instructors have reported positive anecdotal evidence of their usefulness. We conducted formal, repeatable experiments to investigate the effect of these viewers for singly linked lists on student performance and we found a statistically significant improvement over traditional methods of visual debugging that use break-points.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1145/1148493.1148497
SOFTVIS
Keywords
Field
DocType
experimental evaluation,jgrasp ide,animated-verifying object viewer,pedagogically effective software visualization,seamless integration,object viewer,lightweight ide,use break-points,positive anecdotal evidence,multiple instructor,primitive variable,basic integrated development environment,software visualization,data structures,data structure,statistical significance
Data structure,Linked list,Algorithm animation,Computer science,Development environment,Human–computer interaction,Software,Multimedia,Java,Debugging,Creative visualization
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
1-59593-464-2
16
1.41
References 
Authors
6
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jhilmil Jain113417.91
James H. Cross, II21079126.34
T. Dean Hendrix318920.87
Larry A. Barowski410313.11