Kessler, C. and Anderson, J. "Learning Flow of Control: Recursive and Iterative Procedures." Human-Computer Interaction 2:2, 1986.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

.... a programming concept which many students find difficult to understand and to apply in their problem solving activities (e.g. Anderson et al. 1988; Anzai Uesato, 1982a, 1982b; Baird 1986; Elenbogen O kennon 1988; Ford, 1984; Ginat Shifroni 1999; Henderson Romero 1989; Kahney 1983; Kessler Anderson 1986; Kurland Pea 1983; Pirolli, 1986; Roberts 1986; Wiedenbeck, 1988) Recursion is a misunderstood or barely understood programming concept among programmers (Ford 1982) It is difficult because it is a highly unfamiliar mental activity (Anderson et al. 1988) and may be counter intuitive to ....

....unlike experts, are unable to conceptualise separate and unique invocations of subprograms in recursion (the copies model) and more importantly the flow of control in an executing recursive program. Novices easily adopt the more familiar notion of iteration when attempting to understand recursion (Kessler Anderson 1986; Kurland Pea 1983; Wiedenbeck, 1989) In Kahney s study, students were not explicitly taught how to simulate the flow of execution control and visualise separate invocations of subprograms. They were only required to comment on whether the solution programs given would work and did not seemed ....

Kessler, C. M., & Anderson, J. R. (1986). Learning flow of control: Recursive and iterative procedures. Human-Computer Interaction, 2, 135-166.

....and the range of context expected in tasks and subtasks within that domain. a) b) Figure 3: Pop up Menus in Explainer At a conceptual level, Explainer s use of perspectives (both for varying presentation and domain) corresponds to research in learning, understanding, and designing software [26, 6, 33]. This research focuses on people s development of mental Graph Operations Attribute Propagation Underlying Application Data: non visual graph) Syntactic Perspectives: views) Perspectives: visual graphs) Semantic . A,B,C, R1,R2,R3, Figure 4: Escalante Runtime ....

J.R. Anderson C.M. Kessler. Learning flow of control: Recursive and iterative procedures. Human-Computer Interaction, 2:135--166, 1986.

.... and Anderson observed that examples played a crucial role for students learning LISP concepts [14] In another study, Kessler and Anderson noted variability in learners performance and concluded that when relying on examples, learners must be able to construct correct mental models of examples [9]. Similarly, Chi and colleagues observed that students can learn well from examples, provided they are careful to explain the examples to themselves as they learn (i.e. develop good mental models) 2] Together, these different studies imply a uniform result: learners who develop good mental ....

C.M. Kessler, J.R. Anderson. Learning Flow of Control: Recursive and Iterative Procedures. Human-Computer Interaction 2 (1986), 135-166.

....of examples. In principle, this is the same problem software developers face when attempting to understand classes and frameworks developed by others. Although previous work has evaluated the usefulness of examples generally in helping people learn programming concepts (Pirolli Anderson, 1985; Kessler Anderson, 1986), EXPLAINER focuses on specific principles of explanation using multiple perspectives and programming plans. Beyond Object Oriented Technology 16 A programmer would engage the EXPLAINER tool after a relevant example is identified. Tool support for locating and modifying examples has been ....

....by EXPLAINER. The variability of the programmers performance in the on line documentation group is consistent with other studies of programmers (see the survey by Egan, 1991) Furthermore, the provision of an example by itself was insufficient to prevent this variability, as also observed by Kessler and Anderson (1986) and noted earlier. However, the provision of an example, supplemented by information constituting a representation of a programming plan and with a means of exploring the relationship of the programming plan to a specific example solution, did stem the variability. Programmers who needed to ....

Kessler, C.M., & Anderson, J.R. (1986). Learning Flow of Control: Recursive and Iterative Procedures. Human-Computer Interaction , 2, 135-166.

....example through code listings, execution output, text statement of a problem domain, text statement of program features, and diagrams of program components and features. The benefit of using examples in programming has intuitive appeal but has also been demonstrated in studies [PirolliAnderson 85, KesslerAnderson 86, Lewis 88] These studies indicate that people who are able to develop good mental models of examples can apply that knowledge to new tasks. In programming, the mental model of a task has been defined as a person s informal understanding or background knowledge of a task and the knowledge or ....

C. Kessler and J. Anderson. Learning Flow of Control: Recursive and Iterative Procedures. Human-Computer Interaction, 2:135--166, 1986.

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Kessler, C. and Anderson, J. "Learning Flow of Control: Recursive and Iterative Procedures." Human-Computer Interaction 2:2, 1986.

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