Thesis (Ph.D. (Computer Science)) - Rhodes University, 2007.

Thesis (M.S. in Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulation)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2005. / Thesis Advisor(s): Christian J. Darken. Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-46). Also available online.

In a world where computers are a part of most people's everyday life, learning how to instruct one to perform time consumingand/or complex tasks is beneficial. Visual programming languages aim to make the experience for people programmingcomputers the best it can be by bypassing some of the issues of syntax and translation from mental plan to executable program. However, text-based languages come out on top when it comes to the programming languages most used. This paper aims at finding the strengths and weaknesses of teaching a visual programming language to novices in order to contribute to the otherwise lacking empirical evidence within the field of teaching computer programming. The methods used in order to collect data and answer the research question took inspiration from methods used in ethnomethodology. These methods were: observation through participation within a group of programming novices and semi-structured interviews with programming tutors. What can be seen from the study is that visual programming languages offer a quick introduction to the world of programming that in many ways plays down the difficulties within the area by making programming playful and creative. On the other hand, the boundaries of the language are quickly reached and require the students to switch to a text based language. Also, the visual programming language did not help the students learn how to plan and troubleshoot theirprograms. When progressing to a text-based programming language where planning and troubleshooting are required steps ofthe process this may become troublesome. / I en värld där datorer är en del av människors vardag är det fördelaktigt att lära sig att instruera datorer att utföra tidskrävandeoch/eller komplexa uppgifter. Visuella programmeringsspråk syftar till att göra upplevelsen för personer som programmerar så bra som möjligt genom att minska fokuset på syntax och översättning från mental plan till körbart program. Men de mest använda programmeringsspråken är idag de textbaserade språken och inte de visuella. Denna uppsats syftar till att hitta styrkor och svagheter i att lära ut ett visuellt programmeringsspråk för nybörjare för att bidra till bristen på empiriska bevis inom området datorprogrammeringsundervisning. De metoder som användes för att samla data och svara på forskningsfrågantog inspiration från metoder som används inom ethnomethodologi. Dessa metoder var: observation genom deltagande i engrupp av programmeringsnybörjare samt halvstrukturerade intervjuer med programmeringshandledare. Vad som kan konstaterats från resultatet samt diskussionen är att visuella programmeringsspråk erbjuder en snabb introduktion till programmeringsvärlden och på många sätt avdramatiserar området genom att göra programmeringen lekfull och kreativ. Negativa aspekter av att använda visuella programmeringsspråk är å andra sidan att gränserna för språket snabbt nås och kräver att studenterna byter till t.ex. ett textbaserat språk. Det visuella programmeringsspråket hjälpte inte heller eleverna att lära sig att planera och felsöka sina program. När man går vidare till ett textbaserat programmeringsspråk där planering och felsökning krävs steg i processen kan det bli besvärligt.

Nowadays, there is a big strive to achieve faster and more accurate results of designing buildings in construction companies. Construction companies that work with the design part are continuously searching for methods to increase efficiency in the working process. Autodesk have introduced a software that uses parametric design to provide input to Revit models and to retrieve and manipulate the outcomes of Revit models. The Dynamo software uses visual programming and is connected directly to Revit where the user can gain access to Revit’s data structure where parameters can be controlled and manipulated. This research consists of two parts. The first part shows how 2D Autocad drawing can be converted into 3D Revit models. This is done by using the 2D geometry as reference lines for placing BIM objects. The second part shows how the BIM model can then be used to analyze different elements with Dynamo. The calculations of element cost, weight and thermal transmission losses of floors, walls and roofs are used to illustrate this possibility. All the main goals were achieved and are presented in the report for engineers to utilize. The report illustrates the basics of Dynamo, shows examples of how to it can be used while sharing the scripts that were used for this research. The report also encourages other competent students to continue where this thesis ended. Even though several tasks were achieved in this thesis, there are still much more to learn about parametric design and visual programming.

Incorporating computers into daily K-12 classroom teaching promises to benefit student learning, and improve teaching practice substantially. Computer enhanced curricula may enable more teachers to create exploratory and inquiry based lessons, but in most cases supporting software have only been realized as practice tools for specific rote learning skills. Drills do little to help students develop higher-order reasoning and problem-solving skills. With more computers in the classroom, the assumption was that computers would be integrated into curricula with a high usage of educational software, but research suggests that this assumption has not been borne out (Powell & Okey, 1994; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Our general argument is that systems whose usability characteristics have been designed to meet teachers" needs and that can be easily tailored to meet specific teaching objectives are more likely to be incorporated into everyday teaching practices. One type of computer-based activity that enables teachers to engage students in exploratory learning is an educational simulation. Many educational software packages that build simulations have limited usability because they have unmodifiable, limited modifiable or difficult-to-modify functionality. Still others are useful, but are too expensive for many schools to afford. These packages fall short of achieving the ultimate goal of providing useful classroom simulation technology " providing teachers with the option of building simulations from scratch or reusing existing simulations by adapting their functionality. Because teachers have limited time to learn new technology or develop new simulations, this research focused on developing a new framework that would help teachers create easily adaptable and reusable customized educational materials, encouraging them to use these materials to build and extend simulations in collaboration with their students. We began our study by analyzing the currently available tools for visual construction of educational simulations; we used the results of these analyses to develop an alternative environment"SimBuilder. This environment was designed to address the general usability and programming style issues observed in our analysis of other tools. A minimalist self-study tutorial was designed to support rapid start-up and use of the SimBuilder. Through a comparative analysis using a state-of-the-art environment (AgentSheets) that collected a wide range of quantitative and qualitative measures of learning, programming style, usability, motivation, and strategies for code reuse, we determined that SimBuilder offers an improved environment for teachers to construct educational simulations. / Ph. D.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:36:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 3624276 bytes, checksum: 0ea55302ad3ec4a70acb0d8b123b64b0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-03-01 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The complexity involved in the generation of medical applications based on Virtual Reality (VR) requires, in most cases, a specific knowledge in programming to manipulate these computer systems. A study in this dissertation noted that most frameworks with VR resources do not have application programming interface targeted for lay users. This fact applies in several areas, including health. In this context, the CyberMed highlights as a framework for developing medical applications based on VR. Another studying shows that health professionals will have to interact with systems in VR easy to use. Based on these results and other studies performed, this dissertation presents a study on Visual Programming (VP) in frameworks in health area and shows how this technique can help during process of interaction and generation of medical applications, with features in stereoscopy, collision, deformation and haptic sensing, for example, by non-programmers . As a result of this study, the architecture of VP system called CyberMedVPS is showed. It is based on VP techniques that enable VR application development by interaction predominantly graphical at VR frameworks to healthcare professionals. / A complexidade envolvida no processo de geração de aplicações médicas baseadas em Realidade Virtual (RV) exige, em sua maioria, um conhecimento específico em programação para manipular estes sistemas computacionais. Um estudo realizado neste trabalho observou que a maioria dos frameworks que geram aplicações baseadas em RV não possui interface de programação de aplicações voltada para usuários leigos. Isso se aplica em diversas áreas, inclusive na saúde. Neste contexto, se destaca o CyberMed como framework para desenvolvimento de aplicações médicas baseadas em RV. Outro levantamento realizado neste trabalho mostrou que os profissionais da área de saúde possuem vontade de interagir com sistemas em RV de fácil uso. Baseado nesses resultados e em outros estudos executados, esse trabalho apresentará um estudo sobre Programação Visual (PV) em frameworks na área de saúde e mostrará como essa técnica pode ajudar no processo de interação e de geração de aplicações médicas, com recursos de estereoscopia, colisão, deformação e sensação háptica, por exemplo, pelos usuários leigos em programação. Como resultado desse estudo, é apresentada a arquitetura de um Sistema de PV chamado de CyberMedVPS baseado em técnicas de PV e que possibilita o desenvolvimento de aplicações com recursos em RV por meio da interação predominantemente gráfica com frameworks baseados em RV pelos profissionais de saúde.

Despite two decades of empirical studies focusing on programmers and the problems with programming, usability of textual programming languages is still hard to achieve. Its younger relation, visual programming languages (VPLs) also share the same problem of poor usability. This research explores and investigates the usability issues relating to VPLs in order to suggest a set of design principles that emphasise usability. The approach adopted focuses on issues arising from the interaction and communication between the human (programmers), the computer (user interface), and the program. Being exploratory in nature, this PhD reviews the literature as a starting point for stimulating and developing research questions and hypotheses that experimental studies were conducted to investigate. However, the literature alone cannot provide a fully comprehensive list of possible usability problems in VPLs so that design principles can be confidently recommended. A commercial VPL was, therefore, holistically evaluated and a comprehensive list of usability problems was obtained from the research. Six empirical studies employing both quantitative and qualitative methodology were undertaken as dictated by the nature of the research. Five of these were controlled experiments and one was qualitative-naturalistic. The experiments studied the effect of a programming paradigm and of representation of program flow on novices' performances. The results indicated superiority of control-flow programs in relation to data-flow programs; a control-flow preference among novices; and in addition that directional representation does not affect performance while traversal direction does - due to cognitive demands imposed upon programmers. Results of the qualitative study included a list of 145 usability problems and these were further categorised into ten problem areas. These findings were integrated with other analytical work based upon the review of the literature in a structured fashion to form a checklist and a set of design principles for VPLs that are empirically grounded and evaluated against existing research in the literature. Furthermore, an extended framework for Cognitive Dimensions of Notations is also discussed and proposed as an evaluation method for diagrammatic VPLs on the basis of the qualitative study. The above consists of the major findings and deliverables of this research. Nevertheless, there are several other findings identified on the basis of the substantial amount of data obtained in the series of experiments carried out, which have made a novel contribution to knowledge in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology of Programming, and Visual Programming Languages.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / In visual simulations, the human must make most of her decisions based on the visual cues rendered to her display. On the other hand, synthetic forces have the luxury of basing their decisions on the data contained in the simulation's model. Line of sight calculations are often examples of the synthetic player's excess of information. Current methodologies for determining a synthetic player's line of sight to a target are generally variations of a ray-casting technique. Hiding from a synthetic player "in plain sight" by using shadow, camouflage, or by simply remaining motionless is not possible. Synthetic vision is an alternative to ray-casting. We perform multiple renders from each synthetic player's point of view and temporarily maintain those images in graphics memory. We then execute vertex and fragment shader programs to make comparisons of the stored images. All the renders and calculations are performed on the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and the result is returned to the synthetic player in the form of an annotated list of visible targets. Performing these target visibility calculations on the GPU gives the synthetic player a more robust spectrum of visual inputs with which to make decisions, enabling more realistic behaviors. / Captain, United States Marine Corps

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / This work adds new functionality to an existing visual programming environment. It applies software maintenance techniques for use with the Java Language in a Microsoft Windows operating system environment. The previously undocumented application is intended to support programming with executable diagrams. This application has the potential to expand programming access to non-programmers, provide better software documentation and improve software maintainability. It is currently capable of supporting meta-programming tasks such as parsing and compiler building. The 11,184 legacy lines of code(LOC) were corrected, extended and documented to support future maintenance using an additional 957 LOC and changes to 45 LOC. / Major, United States Marine Corps

This thesis reports a research project that aims to improve the teaching and learning of introductory programming from a pedagogical and psychological viewpoint. Towards this aim, seven principles for designing educational programming tools for novices were identified by reviewing literature regarding novices’ difficulties and using a theoretical framework defined by the psychological theories of Constructivism and Cognitive Load Theory. This set of design principles was not only theoretically identified, but its pedagogical impact was also empirically tested. For this reason, Koios, a new programming tool, was designed and developed as a manifestation of the combined set of principles. Empirical studies were conducted by a way of a quasi-experimental design in two different Greek secondary-education institutions. The independent variable was compliance with the set of the seven principles. Students’ level of programming skills (procedural knowledge) was the dependent variable, while the quality of their mental models in the domain of introductory programming (declarative knowledge) was the potential mediator. The effect of compliance with the set of principles on students’ programming skills and mental-model quality was explored via Koios’ evaluation. Declarative- and procedural-knowledge measurements, as well as a practical test, were used to collect data, which were analysed using ANOVA and hierarchical multiple regression. The major conclusions drawn from this study are:(a) compliance with the set of design principles does not affect the development of novices’ procedural and declarative programming knowledge, (b) a programming tool that highly complies with this set facilitates novices in the application of their procedural programming knowledge during program creation and (c) programming tools, declarative and procedural knowledge are independent components in learning to program. However, it was also concluded that the two knowledge types and a programming tool that highly complies with the set contribute significantly to novices’ programming performance. This study contributes to knowledge by theoretically identifying and empirically testing a set of design principles for educational programming software, and by producing and scientifically evaluating a programming tool as an embodiment of this set. Through this evaluation, the suggestion of Koios as a practically useful programming tool for novices seems to be well supported.