Anchor Garden 2

We propose ``Anchor Garden,'' a workbench software to learn fundamentals of data structure with concepts of type, variable, object, and its relations in a strongly-typed object oriented programming language such as Java and C\#. Learners can approach the concepts by a direct manipulation of graphical models. Anchor Garden (AG) allows the learners to create variables and objects, and to link among them. Since AG automatically generates source-code corresponding to the learner's manipulations, the learner can relate manipulations and representations of source code. Experimental result showed a positive tendency of learning effect with AG, and high correlations between the concept understanding and programming ability. Thus AG has a possibility to enhance the programming ability for novice programmers.

Demo Video (created by Jing)

Usage

• Press one of the "Type" to select.
• Left-Click on [Variable] area. Variable of the selected type is created.
• Left-Click on [Object] area. Object of the selected type will be created. (for Class/Array)
• The objects created will disappear unless linked from variables.
• The objects will also disappear when all incoming link is lost.
• The type matching is necessary to link from variables to objects.
• When the user rotates mouse wheel, AG zooms in to the cursor place.
• The user can zoom in to the specified region by right-dragging.
• [ESC] key to initialize view.
• [Extra]=>[Source Code] menu shows the source code window.
• The user can specify variable names, array sizes and initial string by disable [Extra]=>[Automatic].

Scapshot

Source Code

• The Eclipse project depends on Piccolo2D.
• Source Code (GitHub)

Papers

1. Motoki Miura, Taro Sugihara, Susumu Kunifuji: Anchor Garden: An Interactive Workbench for Basic Data Concept Learning in Object Oriented Programming Languages, Proceedings of 14th ACM–SIGCSE Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE2009), Paris, pp. 141-145, July 2009. (info)