[Edu-sig] On the front page (in defense of Alice)

[James Harrison]

One last response from me :-) ...

I don't really think you're off base in your Alice comments. Instead, they
point out several potential areas of confusion that people with different
backgrounds and agendas may encounter as they discuss computer-based
education.

I heard Randy Pausch (Alice's project director) do a presentation on Alice
earlier this year and it was clear to me from that session that his real
interest was in interface design. Alice as he has constructed it represents
an experiment in interface design that is all about making a task that is
complex for computer users (3D world construction) easier. Part of his
rationale is that 3D worlds, at least some types of them, may best be built
by artists and designers rather than engineers, but current tools require a
user with an engineering mindset. This removes a large segment of potential
authors who might make important contributions. His research in the
construction of Alice has involved issues such as how non-engineering people
think about the orientation of objects and movement in three dimensions.
Understanding this informs tool design and even the choice of words for
menus.

With relation to education, Alice is used at CMU in a course in
"human-computer interaction" in which artists and designers are paired with
engineers in the construction of example 3D worlds using Alice. This common
task creates an environment in which the two groups from different
backgrounds experience how each other thinks about using the computer as a
tool.

Alice also might be a useful tool for creating 3D worlds that teach. The
important issue here is that educators who are not engineers might be able
to use a tool like Alice themselves to create worlds which are educational
simulations. With additional development, a the tool might be able to create
worlds rapidly with sufficient detail to teach a variety of topics including
those of traditional general educational and others related to dangerous
environments or medical procedures that are difficult to practice in
reality.

Some of Alice's concepts might also be useful in teaching computer
programming. By providing an environment where the results of code are
clearly displayed as object creation, object characteristics and movement,
the elements of program logic could be effectively displayed. This would
also be a good environment to introduce OOP concepts because object
attributes and methods in code map logically to visual characteristics and
capabilities of VR objects. Such an environment could be interesting and
strongly reinforcing for younger students.

I think this possibility has caught Guido's and other's imaginations. Alice
in its current incarnation wasn't really designed for teaching programming,
though it could inform such a system. IMHO, the real issue is which elements
of Alice should be incorporated into an IDE that could be a pleasure for
novices to use and could draw them into a fascination with the capabilities
and power of programming--whether or not the job at hand involves
manipulation of VR objects in 3 dimensions, text characters in one dimension
or numbers in n dimensions.

Jim Harrison
University of Pittsburgh