Creating Engaging Online Learning Material with the JSAV JavaScript Algorithm Visualization Library

Data Structures and Algorithms are a central part of Computer Science. Due to their abstract and dynamic nature, they are a difficult topic to learn for many students. To alleviate these learning difficulties, instructors have turned to algorithm visualizations (AV) and AV systems. Research has show...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on learning technologies Vol. 9; no. 2; pp. 171 - 183
Main Authors: Karavirta, Ville, Shaffer, Clifford A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.04.2016
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
Active Electronic Textbooks
Algorithm Animation
Algorithms
Animation
Computer Assisted Instruction
Computer Science
Computer Science Education
Data Structure and Algorithm Visualizations
Data structures
Data visualization
Electronic Learning
Heuristic algorithms
HTML5
Hypermedia
Hypertextbook
Instructional Materials
Interactive Courseware
Java
JSAV
Learning Problems
Libraries
Mathematics
Programming
Systems integration
Tutorials
Visualization
algorithm animation
active electronic textbooks
hypertextbook
HTML5
JSAV
Data structure and algorithm visualizations
interactive courseware
ISSN:1939-1382, 2372-0050
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Data Structures and Algorithms are a central part of Computer Science. Due to their abstract and dynamic nature, they are a difficult topic to learn for many students. To alleviate these learning difficulties, instructors have turned to algorithm visualizations (AV) and AV systems. Research has shown that especially engaging AVs can have an impact on student learning of DSA topics. Until recently, most AV systems were Java-based systems. But, the popularity of Java has declined and is being supplanted by HTML5 and JavaScript content online. In this paper, we present JSAV: the JavaScript AV development library. JSAV goes beyond traditional AV library support for displaying standard data structures components, to provide functionality to simplify creation of AVs on many engagement levels including interactive exercises. We describe the growing body of content created with JSAV and summarize our three years of experience and research results from using JSAV to build content that supports CS education.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:1939-1382
2372-0050
DOI:10.1109/TLT.2015.2490673