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Alice in Oman

A study on object-first approaches in computer science education

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Abstract

The success of university-level education depends on the quality of underlying school education and any deficiency therein may be detrimental to a student’s career. This may be more glaring with Computer Science education, given its mercurial nature. In the developing countries, the Computer Science school curricula are usually stuffed with obsolete, unnecessary and dry contents. The problem is multiplied by the lack of qualified school teachers and separate media of instruction at the school and the university. In this paper we are focusing on the computer Science pedagogy at schools, with a possibility of introducing approaches, like Alice. The latter may on one hand be appealing to both the students and teachers and on the other hand may require a lot less training. With that in view, an experiment was designed to teach Alice, to sampled K-12 students, and study the ensued effects. The outcomes were realized in two ways. One, the attendees were required to furnish a small project/task in order to judge their understanding of Alice. Two, the students were surveyed for their views on Alice and possible inclusion of such approaches in their course. Given the brief contact time, the results were found to be promising as most of the respondents were in favor of a change in the approach Computer Science teaching. The tasks were well received by the respondents and most of them carried out the tasks assigned to them, enthusiastically. English language Comprehension was the single largest problem and that’s why the students demonstrated reluctance in adding dialogues on part of the characters. As far as the responses to the questionnaire were concerned, an overwhelming majority had a favorable opinion of the approach. They found it easy to use, understand, comprehend and considered it useful in initiating a novice to programming. They even rated it superior to their current syllabus. Some questions were chosen from the futuristic point of view and the responses were more than expected as the students felt motivated towards studying IT after coming across Alice. The only thing the respondents insisted was the inclusion Arabic language support in the future versions of Alice.

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Notes

  1. http://www.alice.org

  2. http://scratch.mit.edu/

  3. http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker

  4. http://www.greenfoot.org/door

  5. http://www.bluej.org/about.html

  6. http://csta.acm.org/Research/sub/Projects/ResearchFiles/kelleherThesis_CSD.pdf

  7. http://scratch.mit.edu/

  8. http://tonyaedmonds10.blogspot.com/2010/03/comparing-alice-greenfoot-and-scratch.html

  9. http://www.greenfoot.org/door

  10. http://www.bluej.org/about.html

  11. http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=what_is_alice/what_is_alice

  12. http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/pair.html

  13. store.steampowered.com

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Arts and Sciences, University of Nizwa, Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman

    Khizar Hayat & Naeem Ali Al-Shukaili

  2. COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), Abbottabad, 22060, Pakistan

    Khizar Hayat

  3. Mass Communication Department, College of Applied Sciences, Ministry of Higher Education, Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman

    Khalid Sultan

Authors
  1. Khizar Hayat
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  2. Naeem Ali Al-Shukaili
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  3. Khalid Sultan
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Correspondence to Khizar Hayat.

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Hayat, K., Al-Shukaili, N.A. & Sultan, K. Alice in Oman. Educ Inf Technol 22, 1553–1569 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-016-9499-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-016-9499-4

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