{"title":"Alice Adventures in ComputingLand: A review","authors":"K. Al-Tahat","doi":"10.1109/acit53391.2021.9677413","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Computer programming is often presented to students as an abstract discipline that looks aseptic and ultimately boring to many learners; learners find their first computing course uninspiring and programming hard and socially isolating. This causes a decline in the interest in computing among learners. Although there have been many attempts to make computing appealing, more interesting, easier and enjoyable, many educators are still using the classic methods in teaching and learning computer programming. The aim of this work is to call the attention of computing educators to an approach that uses 3D virtual environments to teaching programming. We introduce this approach through a tool that offers innovative methods for teaching wide spectrum of computing topics; Alice. Alice is an innovative programming environment that can be used to create stories by animating characters in a 3D world. Alice is written in Java and has an object-oriented flavor. The paper presents a review of research on using Alice in motivating teaching programming and problem solving, algorithmic thinking, software modeling, and game design and implementation. New trends of using Alice in teaching computing are also suggested.","PeriodicalId":302120,"journal":{"name":"2021 22nd International Arab Conference on Information Technology (ACIT)","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"2021 22nd International Arab Conference on Information Technology (ACIT)","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1109/acit53391.2021.9677413","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Computer programming is often presented to students as an abstract discipline that looks aseptic and ultimately boring to many learners; learners find their first computing course uninspiring and programming hard and socially isolating. This causes a decline in the interest in computing among learners. Although there have been many attempts to make computing appealing, more interesting, easier and enjoyable, many educators are still using the classic methods in teaching and learning computer programming. The aim of this work is to call the attention of computing educators to an approach that uses 3D virtual environments to teaching programming. We introduce this approach through a tool that offers innovative methods for teaching wide spectrum of computing topics; Alice. Alice is an innovative programming environment that can be used to create stories by animating characters in a 3D world. Alice is written in Java and has an object-oriented flavor. The paper presents a review of research on using Alice in motivating teaching programming and problem solving, algorithmic thinking, software modeling, and game design and implementation. New trends of using Alice in teaching computing are also suggested.