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The design and implementation of a notional machine for teaching introductory programming

Authors:

Michael Berry,

Michael KöllingAuthors Info & Claims

WiPSE '13: Proceedings of the 8th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education

Pages 25 - 28

https://doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532765

Published: 11 November 2013 Publication History

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Abstract

Comprehension of programming and programs is known to be a difficult task for many beginning students, with many computing courses showing significant drop out and failure rates. In this paper, we present a new notional machine design and implementation to help with understanding of programming and its dynamics for beginning learners. The notional machine offers an abstraction of the physical machine designed for comprehension and learning purposes. We introduce the notional machine and describe an implementation in BlueJ.

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Cited By

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Bevilacqua JChiodini LMoreno Santos IHauswirth M(2024)Assessing the Understanding of Expressions: A Qualitative Study of Notional-Machine-Based Exam QuestionsProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699554(1-12)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699554
Ou WChen BDai XZhang WLiu WTang RYu Y(2023)A Survey on Bid Optimization in Real-Time Bidding Display AdvertisingACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data10.1145/3628603Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628603
Bozdag MSevim NKoç A(2023)Measuring and Mitigating Gender Bias in Legal Contextualized Language ModelsACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data10.1145/3628602Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628602
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Index Terms

The design and implementation of a notional machine for teaching introductory programming
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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Published In

WiPSE '13: Proceedings of the 8th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education

November 2013

141 pages

ISBN:9781450324557

DOI:10.1145/2532748

Conference Chairs:
Michael E. Caspersen
Aarhus University, Denmark
,
Maria Knobelsdorf
New York University, USA
,
Ralf Romeike
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 11 November 2013

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Aarhus University
GI

WiPSCE '13: Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education

November 11 - 13, 2013

Aarhus, Denmark

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Overall Acceptance Rate 104 of 279 submissions, 37%

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Bevilacqua JChiodini LMoreno Santos IHauswirth M(2024)Assessing the Understanding of Expressions: A Qualitative Study of Notional-Machine-Based Exam QuestionsProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699554(1-12)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699554
Ou WChen BDai XZhang WLiu WTang RYu Y(2023)A Survey on Bid Optimization in Real-Time Bidding Display AdvertisingACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data10.1145/3628603Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628603
Bozdag MSevim NKoç A(2023)Measuring and Mitigating Gender Bias in Legal Contextualized Language ModelsACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data10.1145/3628602Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628602
Huang QMa JLi JGuo RSun HChang Y(2023)Modeling Interference for Individual Treatment Effect Estimation from Networked Observational DataACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data10.1145/3628449Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628449
Munasinghe BBell TRobins A(2023)Computational Thinking and Notional Machines: The Missing LinkACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/362782923:4(1-27)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627829
Sim TLau S(2022)Review on Challenges and Solutions in Novice Programming Education2022 IEEE International Conference on Computing (ICOCO)10.1109/ICOCO56118.2022.10031657(55-61)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICOCO56118.2022.10031657
Dickson PBrown NBecker BGiannakos MSindre GLuxton-Reilly ADivitini M(2020)Engage Against the Machine: Rise of the Notional Machines as Effective Pedagogical DevicesProceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3341525.3387404(159-165)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341525.3387404
Berg CDhanjal SAhmed F(2016)From buds to Bloom'sProceedings of the 21st Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education10.1145/2910925.2910947(1-3)Online publication date: 6-May-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2910925.2910947
Kramer MHubwieser PBrinda T(2016)A Competency Structure Model of Object-Oriented Programming2016 International Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering (LaTICE)10.1109/LaTiCE.2016.24(1-8)Online publication date: Mar-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/LaTiCE.2016.24
Hidalgo-Cespedes JMarin-Raventos GLara-Villagran V(2016)Learning principles in program visualizations: A systematic literature review2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE.2016.7757692(1-9)Online publication date: Oct-2016
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2016.7757692
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Notional machines and introductory programming education

The state of play: a notional machine for learning programming

Automatic assessment of program visualization exercises

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