Joint Conferences Tutorial

As computer science enrolments continue to decline nationwide, new paradigms are needed to attract students to the field and to help provide remediation for students who are interested in the field, but who may not possess the required background. Alice is an object oriented language that uses an animation and storyboard approach to teach students the fundamental ideas behind object oriented programming without requiring an undue focus on syntax.
In this tutorial, we will teach the basic concepts behind the Alice programming environment, such as constructing virtual worlds, creating object and world level methods, implementing functions, inheritance, and handling events. We will also discuss the particulars involved with implementing Alice in unique cultural environments (based on work supported by NSF-CCLI grant (DUE-0510157) and how Alice is helping to overcome the inherent gender inequity found in the fields of computer science and engineering.

At the end of this tutorial, attendees should be able to create basic animations using the Alice programming environment and to understand the basic concepts of the Alice programming language. Attendees will also be able to understand the conceptual mapping between the animation-based constructs used in Alice and those employed in more traditional object oriented languages such as Java and C++. Finally, attendees will gain an awareness of the challenges inherent in implementing Alice as part of a remediation effort in a computer science curriculum.

The intended audience for this tutorial is anyone who is interested in applying a new paradigm to teaching introductory programming concepts to beginning computer science students. The tutorial will also interest those who would like to learn about rudimentary computer animation.

Dr. H. Keith Edwards is an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He obtained his bachelors degree in mathematics and creative writing with a minor in comparative literature from the University of Michigan in 1993 and his master's degree in mathematics and computer science from Eastern Michigan University in 1999.
After a wrong turn at the Canadian border in 1999, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario in 2004 under the guidance of Dr. Michael A. Bauer. During that time, he also served as a research fellowship student at the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies in Toronto, Ontario.
Dr. Edwards enjoys researching performance measurement methodologies for distributed systems, applied areas of software engineering, computer science education, and implementation issues for management information systems. In his spare time outside of academia, he enjoys hiking, playing Frisbee, and studying the martial arts.