Evidence in favor of visual representation for the dataflow paradigm: An experiment testing LabVIEW's comprehensibility

Whitley, Kirsten; Novick, Laura R.; Fisher, Douglas H.

doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.06.005

Cited by 32 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…There were three errors (two involving pruning and one involving collapsing), although students were not told that. Whitley, Novick, and Fisher () found that asking students to identify errors is a good way to measure their understanding of a concept.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We kept the identifying errors question separate from the other ToL subsets questions because it required a deeper level of cognitive analysis: Students had to figure out what would be the correct answer after both pruning and collapsing taxa on the same cladogram (a skill they had not practiced), compare the given answer to the one they generated, identify the discrepancies, and then explain how to fix the errors. Whitley et al () found in their instructional study concerning computer programming that this type of debugging question was a particularly good measure of student understanding.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Deconstructing evolution education: The relationship between micro‐ and macroevolution

2014

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With applications of Tree of Life data becoming ever more prevalent in everyday contexts, tree thinking has emerged as a vital component of scientific literacy. This article reports a study testing the hypothesis that instruction in natural selection, which is the primary focus of US evolution education at the high school and introductory college levels, does little to promote tree-thinking skills and that explicit instruction in understanding evolutionary tree diagrams is required. Testing this contention required the creation of a novel tree-thinking assessment and an instructional intervention, both guided by deep knowledge of evolutionary biology and of science education research. College students (N ¼ 124) with weaker versus stronger backgrounds in biology were randomly assigned to control versus instructional conditions and were also assessed for their knowledge of natural selection. Although knowledge of natural selection and ability to engage in tree thinking were correlated, a short instructional booklet that provided a basic introduction to evolutionary trees predicted tree-thinking success more strongly than did either knowledge of natural selection or previous college coursework in biology. Clearly, tree thinking and natural selection are dissociable constructs that must both be taught for students to grasp the full gamut of evolutionary patterns and processes. # Just as beginning students in geography need to be taught how to read maps, so beginning students in biology should be taught how to read trees and to understand what trees communicate (O'Hara, 1998, p. 327). Humans are most closely related, evolutionarily, to chimpanzees. Humans, chimps, and the other primates, in turn, share an ancestor with all other mammals. Mammals share a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) with reptiles. Mammals and reptiles share an ancestor with arthropods. As a group, animals share an ancestor with fungi. Animals and fungi, together, share an ancestor with plants. And so on. If we go back far enough in time, we find that all living things have a single ancestor in common. This history of "descent with modification" (Darwin, 1859) can be represented in the form of a very large, branching Tree of Life (ToL). The set of skills required to understand and reason with such information depicted in diagrammatic representations of the ToL is referred to as tree thinking. Tree thinking is an important aspect of 21st century science literacy.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deconstructing evolution education: The relationship between micro‐ and macroevolution

2014

Self Cite

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“…As end-users defining reactive behaviors in ambient intelligent environments with our rule model will have to effectively define these data transformation flows, it is important to evaluate the ease of understanding of the proposed visual dataflow language. However, unlike other studies that have done this on specific tools, using complex approximations including bifurcations and iterations, aimed at software engineering students with some experience in the subject [40], our study focused on basic structures suited to young non-programmers. The objective of the study was therefore to evaluate the ease of understanding, creation and evolution of expressions and ease of use of the system by this user segment.…”

Section: User Study On Dataflow Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A meta-model for dataflow-based rules in smart environments: Evaluating user comprehension and performance

Catalá

Pons

Jaén

et al. 2013

Science of Computer Programming

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ElsevierCatalá Bolós, A.; Pons, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Mocholi Agües, JA.; Navarro Martínez, EM. (2013). A meta-model for dataflow-based rules in smart environments: Evaluating user comprehension and performance. Science of Computer Programming. 78(10):1930-1950. doi:10.1016/j.scico.2012.06.010. This is a preprint copy of the article "A meta-model for dataflow-based rules in smart environments: Evaluating user comprehension and performance". Please, use the link below to find the final published version and its complete reference. Albacete, Spain enavarro@dsi.uclm.es Abstract A considerable part of the behavior in smart environments relies on event-driven and rule specification. Rules are the mechanism most often used to enable user customization of the environment. However, the expressiveness of the rules available to users in editing and other tools is usually either limited or the available rule editing interfaces are not designed for end users with low skills in programming. This means we have to look for interaction techniques and new ways to define user customization rules. This paper describes a generic and flexible meta-model to support expressive rules enhanced with data flow expressions that will graphically support the definition of rules without writing code. An empirical study was conducted on the ease-of-understanding of the visual data flow expressions, which are the key elements in our rule proposal. The visual dataflow language was compared to its corresponding textual version in terms of comprehension and ease of learning by teenagers in exercises involving calculations, modifications, writing and detecting equivalences in expressions in both languages. Although the subjects had some previous experience in editing mathematical expressions on spreadsheets, the study found their performance with visual dataflows to be significantly better in calculation and modification exercises. This makes our dataflow approach a promising mechanism for expressing user-customized reactive behavior in AmI environments. The performance of the rule matching processor was validated by means of two stress tests to ensure that the meta-model approach adopted would be able to scale up with the number of types and instances in the space.

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“…Under the tutor's guidance, the student carried out the general design of the software according to the above functions, including making a choice of the software platform and designing the software architecture. It can be learned from literatures that there are two kinds of software development platforms for virtual instruments: (1) Textual programming language [5] : visual C++, Visual Basic, LabWindows CVI, and so on; (2) Graphical programming language [6] : LabVIEW, HPVEE, and so on. Among them, LabVIEW, which stands for Laboratory Virtual Instruments Engineering Workbench, is a Graphical Programming Language ¿rst released by National Instruments, with intelligible user interface construction [7] and dataflow programming concept [8] .…”

Section: A Starting Phase Period:cultivating Ability Of Analyzing Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practice on cultivating computer application ability for the Opto-electronics Engineering students in graduation design

Wang

Yan

Zhang

et al. 2010

2010 5th International Conference on Computer Science &Amp; Education

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Economic progress and information technology development have spurred the demand of multi-talents. So cultivating the compound talents with computer application ability is one of the main duties for the Subject Construction of Opto-electronics Engineering. According to this, the hierarchical curriculum system of the computer application education for opto-electronics engineering undergraduates is briefly introduced. The problem of how to strengthen training of integrated capability especially the computer application skills of students through graduation design is expatiated emphatically. Taking an example of the graduation design based on LabVIEW, which is such an icon-based graphical programming language that allows engineers to express their ideas in a more intuitive and natural way, the following means are explained: enhancing the capability of problem analysis in starting phase; training of solving problem independently in execution phase; cultivating the ability of induction and summarization in the thesis writing period. The practices show that the above strategies can help students to improve multi-aspect capability and to meet the requirements of society better.

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Evidence in favor of visual representation for the dataflow paradigm: An experiment testing LabVIEW's comprehensibility

Cited by 32 publications

References 26 publications

Deconstructing evolution education: The relationship between micro‐ and macroevolution

Deconstructing evolution education: The relationship between micro‐ and macroevolution

A meta-model for dataflow-based rules in smart environments: Evaluating user comprehension and performance

Practice on cultivating computer application ability for the Opto-electronics Engineering students in graduation design

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