Visual Analogy for Understanding Polymorphism Types

Many visualisation tools have been designed to help students with learning programming concepts, often showing positive impact on student performance. Analogies have also often been used to assist in teaching students various programming concepts, and have similarly shown to boost student confidence of the concepts. Less work has been done to specifically target polymorphism, and the misconceptions students face with it. This study presents the design of a new visualisation tool along with its supporting analogy. It aims to assist in teaching the concept of polymorphism to students, along with correcting the misconceptions students have when dealing with this concept. Experiences using the tool for a CS2 OOP course are presented, including engagement logs and student feedback. The paper concludes with findings of this experience, discussing directions for future work in this area.