sigcse tea party 2007

Dennis CosgroveCaitlin Kelleher Randy Pausch Madeleine PitschDon SlaterGabe YuCarnegie Mellon University Wanda Dann – Ithaca College

Steve Cooper- St. Joseph’s University

The Alice Tea Party

This talk was presented at ACM SIGCSE 2007, March 9, 2007 in Cincinnati

www.alice.org

www.aliceprogramming.net

For more information…

Thanks to Prentice Hall

• For paying for this party!

Our Tea Party Agenda

• The Current Alice: v2.0– Why the world needs something like Alice– Brief Demonstration– Examples of how to teach with Alice

• Sneak Peak at Alice: v3.0– Caitlin Kelleher’s work on Storytelling– Our first public demonstration!

• real Java• Professional-quality 3D characters and animations

The Shrinking CS Pool

• http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/march06/vegso.html

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Projected % New and Replacement Jobs Projected % Bachelor's DegreesBureau of Labor: Hecker, D. Occupational employment projections to 2014. Monthly Labor Review. November 2005.

Something drastic needs to be done.

Alice is our focus, but we’re happy to hear about other ideas. But do SOMETHING!

The Alice System (www.alice.org)

• Allows students to learn computer programming more easily– Drag-and-Drop editor for creating programs– Programs are 3D movies or games

• Alice has been formally shown to improve learning and retention

• Alice is highly motivating for students

• Provided free (open source) by Carnegie Mellon

• Runs on

Demo of Alice v2.0

• How many people here have taught w/Alice?

Demo of Alice v2.0

• How many have seen an Alice demo?

Live Demo of Alice v2.0

Alice has always been free.Alice will always continue to be free.

Pedagogically: Why Alice Works

1. No syntax-based frustration

2. Data is visible; changes are animated; you can see what is happening

3. Highly motivating

Objects are suddenly “obvious”

• Makes objects something students can see and relate to

Support & Help: Online Forums at www.alice.org

Support & Help: In-system Tutorials

Instructional Materials

• www.aliceprogramming.net – syllabi/calendars– lectures– labs– assignments– sample worlds (programs)– sample exams– sample projects

Steve Cooper

www.aliceprogramming.net

• Web pages

• a live demo was done here of the resources available at

• www.aliceprogramming.net

Steve Cooper

Sample Lesson: Rolling a ball

• We want a realistic motion rather than a slide. • The ball must simultaneously move and roll.

realisticRoll

Do together move ball forward 1 meter, as seen by the ground turn ball forward ? revolutions

Design

Wanda Dann

Number of revolutions• The number of revolutions depends on the size

of the ball.

one revolution

four revolutions

Wanda Dann

A function

• The number of revolutions can be computed using

distance/( * diameter)

• Two values are needed– the ball’s diameter

• the ball object has a built-in width function

– the distance the ball is to travel • can be sent to the function using a parameter

Wanda Dann

Coding the function

Two values are needed.

Wanda Dann

How Alice is being used

• In pre-CS1 or programming logic – course for majors and students considering a

computing major

• As conceptual introduction in CS1• Introduction to programming course

– non-majors– attract students to become majors

• Computer literacy– problem-solving, algorithmic thinking component

• Pre-AP in high schools

Wanda Dann

Summer 2007 Workshops• Alice

– May 30-31: NCC, Garden City, NY– July 16-22: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA– August 8-10: CSU-Domingues Hills, Carson, CA

• Alice and Media Computation– July 26-28: Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI– August 1-3: Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA

• To enroll, visit www.aliceprogramming.net

Don Slater

TextbookDeveloped over 5 year period in conjunction with the software.

TextbookDeveloped over 5 year period in conjunction with the software.

Goal: 5,000 copies in first year

Printed To Date: 23,0000 copies

Brief Edition

• In response to market requests• 160 vs. 375 pages• Intended to be used for

– 2-3 weeks in “literacy courses

– 2 weeks of CS1, followed by a java text

Other texts based on Alice are appearing

To those who object…

To those who object…

To those who object…

• Your department heads?

Objection:

Alice is just some fringe thing. It will go away soon.

A lot of colleges are using Alice

• How many is “a lot”?

• Lower bound: 243 are teaching with PH texts

• There are roughly 3,000 U.S. colleges*

• 8% of US colleges are teaching with Alice/PH books

• Many others are teaching with other or no texts

• Many High Schools are using for pre-AP or AP

*http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ/ says 3,176

Last 12 months, at www.alice.org

• 3.5 million page views• 528,000 unique visitors• 158,000 IP addresses performed 440,540

downloads of the system.• (this excludes CD/textbook distribution)

linux1%

windows90%

macintosh9%

Objection:

Alice makes for a slick demo, but doesn’t really teach anything.

Alice helps at-risk CS majors

Declared CS majors at Ithaca College and St. Joseph’s University

CS1 Grade Take CS2?

No Alice Class

Prior to CS1C 47%

Alice Class

Prior to CS1B 88%

Alice helps at-risk CS majors

Declared CS majors at Ithaca College and St. Joseph’s University

CS1 Grade Take CS2?

No Alice Class

Prior to CS1C 47%

Alice Class

Prior to CS1B 88%

M. Moskal, D. Lurie, and S. Cooper, Evaluating the Effectiveness of a New Instructional Approach. In Proceedings of 2004 SIGCSE Conference, (Norfolk, VA).

Objection:

Alice is just a toy. It’s not real programming.

Other Things I’ve Heard Called “Toys”

• Calculators

• Karel

• Logo

• The Macintosh (real men don’t use mice)

• Pascal

• The WWW

Toy vs. “Real” Programming, which is…

Alice Code Java Code

Alice is “real coding”

Objection:

Okay, Alice is better. But I’m too lazy to change how I teach.

• Can’t help you with that one.

Frame the debate: what are we going to be doing in our department?

• http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/march06/vegso.html

TotalMedianPerDept.

We’re never done…Alice is a research project

• Recent Ph.D. dissertation found some big insights on student motivation, which are driving design of Alice v3.0.

• Work done with middle school girls (solve the harder problem), but many lessons broadly applicable.

• Caitlin Kelleher

Storytelling Alice

Caitlin Kelleher

No matter how easy something is, people still need a reason to

want to do it.

Caitlin Kelleher

Approach

Present programming as a means to the end of storytelling.

Caitlin Kelleher

Changes to Alice• Enable students to create the stories they envision:

– high-level animations – multiple scenes

• Provide characters and custom animations that help spark story

– Caricatured characters – Animations that require explanation.

Hero or Villain

Authority Figure

Caitlin Kelleher

Live Demo of Storytelling Alice

Caitlin Kelleher

People are more important than objects

students very rarely animate things.

In Storytelling Alice, humanoids and other non-bipedal characters are a different type and have different methods than non-living “things”.

Caitlin Kelleher

What people can do…

Storytelling Alice:• Say, think• Walk to, Walk offscreen• Walk • Sit On• Lie on• Kneel• Fall Down• Stand Up• Straighten• Look at• Look• Turn to face, Turn away from• Turn• Touch• Keep Touching

Generic Alice:• Move• Turn• Roll • Resize• Play Sound• Move to• Move toward, Move away from• Orient to• Turn to Face, point at• Set point of view to• Set Pose• Stand up• Move at speed, turn at speed, roll at

speed• Constrain to face, Constrain to point at

Caitlin Kelleher

Character actions often motivate use of programming constructs like

loops, methods and parameters

Caitlin Kelleher

“touch” and “keep touching” enable creation of generalizable motions

Evaluation with Girls Scouts

But we believe the approach works for both genders and all ages.

Formative: ~250 usersSummative: 88 users

Caitlin Kelleher

Three Activities in Alice

1: Scene Layout

2: Editing Programs

3: Running ProgramsCaitlin Kelleher

Users of Storytelling Alice spend 42% more time programming

Average % Time Spent on Alice Activities

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Scene Layout Editing Program Running Program

Generic Alice

Storytelling Alice

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Storytelling Alice motivates the reluctant programmers

Scene Layout vs. Program Editing

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Generic Alice Storytelling Alice

Users of the storytelling version show more evidence of engagement/motivation

% of girls who sneak extra time to work on their Alice worlds

Story-Alice 51%

Regular Alice 16%

p < 0.001

Caitlin Kelleher

The Future: Alice v3.0

• Been in development for almost a year; will release in 2008.

• Goal: Alice as the system to teach introductory programming.

• Driven by Caitlin Kelleher’s findings about storytelling – Students are motivated to make movies (or videogames)

• Real Java– Alice v3.0 is a Java IDE, based on eclipse– Your students will see real Java (if you choose)– Drag & Drop or type -> it’s up to you!

• Insanely high production values: as good as real video games

• We are developing a textbook along with the system– Just as we did with Alice v2.0– Wanda Dann, Steve Cooper, Randy Pausch and Don Slater

Production values as good as real video games???

This is what I couldn’t tell you about at last year’s Tea Party…

Best Selling PC Games of all time:1. The Sims (16 million) 2. Myst (9 million) 3. Starcraft (9 million) 4. Half-Life (8 million) 5. Age of Empires II (7 million) 6. World of Warcraft (5 million) 7. The Sims 2 (4.5 million) 8. Diablo II (4 million) 9. Doom (3 million) 10.Half-Life 2 (3 million) 11.StarCraft: Brood War (3 million) 12.Warcraft II (3 million) 13.Warcraft III (3 million) 14.Age of Empires (3 million) 15.Diablo (2.5 million) 16.Civilization III (2.5 million) 17.Quake (1.8 million) 18.Battlefield 1942 (1.5 million) 19.Civilization IV (1.2 million)

Electronic Arts (EA)

• World’s largest video game company

• EA has given us $300,000* and permission to use the characters and animations from “The SimsTM 2” in Alice v3.0

• We graciously thank them.

• EA is doing this because they care about getting more students, especially girls/women, interested in computing.

*From the EA foundation

Best Selling PC Games of all time:1. The Sims (16 million) 2. Myst (9 million) 3. Starcraft (9 million) 4. Half-Life (8 million) 5. Age of Empires II (7 million) 6. World of Warcraft (5 million) 7. The Sims 2 (4.5 million) 8. Diablo II (4 million) 9. Doom (3 million) 10.Half-Life 2 (3 million) 11.StarCraft: Brood War (3 million) 12.Warcraft II (3 million) 13.Warcraft III (3 million) 14.Age of Empires (3 million) 15.Diablo (2.5 million) 16.Civilization III (2.5 million) 17.Quake (1.8 million) 18.Battlefield 1942 (1.5 million) 19.Civilization IV (1.2 million)

And the Sims has more female than male players!

Production Values Matter

Production Values Matter

The First Public Demo ofAlice v3.0 with the SimsTM!

This scene was rendered in Alice v3.0

Setting expectations…

• Our first demo; this is an early proof of concept.

• Alice v3.0 is still in early phase development, and will not be publicly available until 2008

• Our goals for this demo• Prove that this is not “vaporware”• Show you Alice v3.0 is really Java code• Prove that we are using the SimsTM assets

Live demo of Alice v3.0 with the Sims

Many (fun!) challenges

• The objected-oriented model and semantics– classes, inheritance, overriding, polymorphism, etc.– semantically, Alice v3.0 is Java– how we express via UI and textbook is a wonderful challenge– 3D objects (people) as objects is still the huge win of Alice

• Transition from Drag-and-Drop to Typing– Training wheels that slowly fade away

• Visibility of Data– “variable” is a term for “invisible data”

• Developing Custom Curricula– from the user/teaching community– we expect more of this, since it’s Java at the bottom

• DoTogether– Still there, but a little ugly when you see the Java code

Thanks to our Sponsors

Alice is a well supported project, and isn’t going away…

Dennis CosgroveCaitlin KelleherRandy Pausch Madeleine PitschDon SlaterGabe YuCarnegie Mellon University

Wanda Dann – Ithaca College

Steve Cooper- St. Joseph’s University

Questions?

www.alice.orgwww.aliceprogramming.net