The material taught in a Formal Languages course is mathematical in nature and requires students to practice proofs and algorithms to understand the content. Traditional Formal Languages textbooks are heavy on prose, and homework typically consists of solving many paper exercises. Some instructors make use of finite state machine simulators like the JFLAP package. JFLAP helps students by allowing them to build models and apply various algorithms on these models, which improves student interaction with the studied material. However, students still need to read a significant amount of text and practice problems by hand to achieve understanding. Inspired by the principles of the Programmed Instruction (PI) teaching method, we seek to develop a new Formal Languages eTextbook capable of conveying these concepts more intuitively. The PI approach has students read a little, ideally a sentence or a paragraph, and then answer a question or complete an exercise related to that information. Based on the question response, students can continue to other information frames or retry to solve the exercise. Our goal is to present all algorithms using algorithm visualizations and produce proficiency exercises to let students demonstrate understanding. To evaluate the pedagogical effectiveness of our new eTextbook, we conduct time and performance evaluations across two offerings of the course CS4114 Formal Languages and Automata. In time evaluation, the time spent by students looking at instructional content with text and visualizations versus with PI frames is compared to determine levels of student engagement. In performance evaluation, students grades are compared to assess learning gains with text and paper exercises only, with text, visualizations with exercises, and with PI frames. / Doctor of Philosophy / Theory textbooks in computer science are hard to read and understand. Traditionally, instructors use books that are heavy on mathematical prose and paper exercises. Sometimes, instructors use simulators to allow students to create, simulate, and test models. Previously, we found that students tend to skip reading the text presented in the books. This leads to less understanding of the topics taught in the course. To increase student engagement, we developed a new eTextbook for the Formal Languages course. We used pedagogy based on Programmed Instruction, presenting the content in the form of short bits of prose followed by the related question. If students can solve the question correctly, this means that they understood the content and are ready to move forward.
To help both instructors and students, we developed a new Formal Languages simulator named OpenFLAP. OpenFLAP allows instructors to create many exercises, and OpenFLAP can grade these exercises automatically.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/113061 |
| Date | 14 July 2021 |
| Creators | Mohammed, Mostafa Kamel Osman |
| Contributors | Computer Science, Shaffer, Clifford A., Rodger, Susan H., Heath, Lenwood S., Ernst, Jeremy V., Kafura, Dennis G. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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