Application of software visualization in programming teaching

Abstract

Motivating students to comprehend software structure, behavior and complexity is often difficult because software cannot be seen or even touched, disappear into files on disks. To overcome this problem, the author has prepared an open source project, some programs developed by students themselves and two software visualization tools, and applied them in programming teaching. They are suitable for classroom use in undergraduate programming courses. The effectiveness of software visualization in programming teaching has been evaluated formally by students. The implementation of software visualization in programming teaching was judged to be successful because of the positive student feedback. This paper describes the case and experiment, the overall effectiveness, and plans for further work.