Linking Tilings to Algorithms: An Approach for Introducing Programming Concepts
Abstract: This poster presents an approach of linking patterns in tilings to regularities in algorithms to help motivate and connect learners with programming concepts. The tiling patterns are used as spatial embodiments of temporal processes. The act of creating the tilings evolves over the duration of the class (CS1): it begins as purely an imperative task, then it moves to partially imperative and partially planned tasks, and finally to completely preplanned tasks. The midpoint between imperative and planned is achieved by allowing for the history of actions to be editable and acted upon with cut and pastes. The progression is accomplished by using of two prototype environments: TileLand (Sedig et. al. 2002). for the imperative and partial planned tasks and PolygonR&D (Morey 2006) for the completely preplanned task. This approach was used in two first year computer science courses have, it appears to be good way to initiate non-computer science majors into the world of programming.