{"title":"Computing learning acquisition?","authors":"Vicki E. Bennett, Kyu Han Koh, A. Repenning","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070413","url":null,"abstract":"How can learning be computed? Curriculum, using visual language as the motivational context with embedded computer science content was utilized in one college computer science class and two middle school technology classes. From the data collected in these three classes over the course of a semester, associated learning progressions were computed from several computational thinking patterns. By comparing the results (learning progressions), some obvious and some not so obvious indications emerged. We believe that the more obvious indications give credence to the less obvious, and hence the measurement tool. This comparison between middle school students and college students demonstrated that middle school students' learning progressions are slower than college level students (obvious), but middle school students' learning skill scores reached/surpassed the entry level scores of students in the college class after designing only two or more games. Consequently, these results tell us that this measurement tool although not validated yet, could measure accumulated learning in certain contexts. Although this is just the first \"outing\" of this tool these results strongly indicate that the tool provides an accurate measure of the concept, in this case, learning accumulation or transfer. The Scalable Game Design (SGD) project was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve computer science interest in middle schools. The goal of SGD is to use visual language programming software (Agentsheets) to introduce a more positive image of computer science through a game design course.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"159 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134140379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A first look at end-user visual computation supporting sharing & reuse with Inflo","authors":"Jonathan Lung, S. Easterbrook","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070420","url":null,"abstract":"Inflo is a web-based tool designed to support quantitative decision-making problems such as carbon calculators. Using the dataflow programming paradigm, Inflo provides an extensible environment for end-user programming. Inflo is built around the idea of collaboration and openness for opportunistic code-reuse and unplanned code sharing.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115379519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ruru: A spatial and interactive visual programming language for novice robot programming","authors":"James P. Diprose, B. MacDonald, J. Hosking","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070374","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070374","url":null,"abstract":"Robots are useful tools for teaching novices programming as real and immediate outcomes of programs can be seen. However robot software development has unique problems making aspects of programming difficult compared with general software development. These problems include the robot platform, the robot's environment and its interaction in three-dimensional space and the fact that events occur in real time. We describe Ruru, a novel visual language that addresses these difficulties through a principled approach to its design. It also visualizes robot inputs intuitively in real time and allows the intuitive amendment of parameters. This improves its usefulness and user friendliness as a tool for teaching novices programming.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128914160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Deriving sound inference rules for concept diagrams","authors":"P. Chapman, Gem Stapleton, J. Howse, I. Oliver","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070384","url":null,"abstract":"The process of designing and modelling an ontology can be difficult, especially if the user finds the syntax to be relatively inaccessible. Providing users with graphical syntax with which they can model and visualise their ontology has the potential to be helpful. Previously, we informally introduced concept diagrams for ontology visualisation and modelling. We present a case study comprising: (a) a set of axioms for an ontology, and (b) a set of theorems that follow from the axioms, together with their proofs. The proofs have been constructed so that they are, in our opinion, of an intuitive style. From these proofs, we derive a set of sound inference rules that can be used to formally reason about ontologies following the same intuitive style. This approach to designing inference rules differs from previous efforts where the primary focus has been on obtaining a set of sound and complete inference rules, rather than on intuitiveness.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125819577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Drawing Euler diagrams with circles and ellipses","authors":"Gem Stapleton, P. Rodgers","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070401","url":null,"abstract":"The use of Euler diagrams as a basis for visual languages is commonplace and they are often used for visualizing information. The ability to automatically draw these diagrams is, therefore, likely to be of widespread practical use. The Euler diagram drawing problem is recognized as challenging, but the potential pay-off from the derivation of a comprehensive solution, that produces usable and effective diagrams, is significant. Previous research on automated Euler diagram drawing has used various different approaches, each of which had their own problems, including: (a) failure to draw a diagram in all cases, (b) poor diagram layout, and (c) inability to ensure that certain wellformedness properties of the drawn diagrams hold. In this paper, we present a novel approach to Euler diagram drawing that draws diagrams with circles, ellipses and curves in general. This new approach will draw a diagram in all cases, avoiding bad layout where possible (by the use of `nice' geometric shapes) and can enforce wellformedness properties as chosen by the user.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133577530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kugamoorthy Gajananan, A. Nakasone, H. Prendinger, Marc Miska
{"title":"Scenario Markup Language for authoring behavioral driver studies in 3D virtual worlds","authors":"Kugamoorthy Gajananan, A. Nakasone, H. Prendinger, Marc Miska","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070376","url":null,"abstract":"We present the Scenario Markup Language (SML), a powerful language for authoring realistic traffic situations. This effort is part of a novel framework for automatically generating complex scenarios with static and dynamic elements. SML facilitates the scripting of behavioral driver studies in networked multi-user online three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"109 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115832711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Policy specifications with Timed Spider Diagrams","authors":"Paolo Bottoni, A. Fish","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070385","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070385","url":null,"abstract":"Spider Diagrams are a well-established visual language used to specify sets, their relationships, and constraints on their cardinalities but they have no means of specifying temporal aspects of a system. Timed Spider Diagrams are an evolution enabling the specification of temporal constraints, with a granular-based time system, for use in areas such as policy specification. In this paper we introduce event based actions to this framework and illustrate with examples from models of an automatic parking meter system, and an internet billing system.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122477270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Visualizing call graphs","authors":"Thomas D. Latoza, Brad A. Myers","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070388","url":null,"abstract":"Developers navigate and reason about call graphs throughout investigation and debugging activities. This is often difficult: developers can spend tens of minutes answering a single question, get lost and disoriented, and erroneously make assumptions, causing bugs. To address these problems, we designed a new form of interactive call graph visualization - REACHER. Instead of leaving developers to manually traverse the call graph, REACHER lets developers search along control flow. The interactive call graph visualization encodes a number of properties that help developers answer questions about causality, ordering, type membership, repetition, choice, and other relationships. And developers remain oriented while navigating. To evaluate REACHER'S benefits, we conducted a lab study in which 12 participants answered control flow questions. Compared to an existing IDE, participants with REACHER were over 5 times more successful in significantly less time. All enthusiastically preferred REACHER, with many positive comments.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128029448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond autocomplete: Automatic function definition","authors":"Kyle I. Murray, Jeffrey P. Bigham","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070421","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070421","url":null,"abstract":"Programmers have used autocomplete to reduce the cognitive overhead of remembering exhaustive lists of APIs for years. Autocomplete has a primary and obvious point of failure: when a programmer expects a certain method or function name to exist and it does not, the autocompletion list simply stops displaying results and disappears. We describe automatic function definition (AFD), which can succeed where autocomplete fails. It is a novel way to reduce the impact of threadbare libraries, increase the coding speed of primary programming tasks, and distribute work among different types of programmers and automatic tools. Instead of seeing an empty list, users can instead perform automatic function definition, which uses several sources to define the function that the user intended to use. We present three complementary techniques for defining functions based on the information about the function that a user provides while writing code as usual: code search, fellow programmers, and the crowd. Finally, we discuss our implementation of this work in progress and plans for evaluation.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129376835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Robert Gove, Cody Dunne, B. Shneiderman, Judith L. Klavans, B. Dorr
{"title":"Evaluating visual and statistical exploration of scientific literature networks","authors":"Robert Gove, Cody Dunne, B. Shneiderman, Judith L. Klavans, B. Dorr","doi":"10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070403","url":null,"abstract":"Action Science Explorer (ASE) is a tool designed to support users in rapidly generating readily consumable summaries of academic literature. It uses citation network visualization, ranking and filtering papers by network statistics, and automatic clustering and summarization techniques. We describe how early formative evaluations of ASE led to a mature system evaluation, consisting of an in-depth empirical evaluation with four domain experts. The evaluation tasks were of two types: predefined tasks to test system performance in common scenarios, and user-defined tasks to test the system's usefulness for custom exploration goals. The primary contribution of this paper is a validation of the ASE design and recommendations to provide: easy-to-understand metrics for ranking and filtering documents, user control over which document sets to explore, and overviews of the document set in coordinated views along with details-on-demand of specific papers. We contribute a taxonomy of features for literature search and exploration tools and describe exploration goals identified by our participants.","PeriodicalId":153383,"journal":{"name":"2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)","volume":"71 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127228154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}