Constructivism: an Alternative Theoretical Foundation

One obvious alternative is to have students construct their own AVs, rather than having them interact with AVs constructed by someone else. While not motivated by learning theory, a few computer science educators have already explored so-called “animation assignments,” in which students are asked to construct their own AV of a given algorithm. For example, Brown (1988, Appendix A) describes animation assignments used in past offerings of Brown University’s undergraduate algorithms course. For such assignments, students were provided with a collection of animation routines that they could insert into their programs in order to animate them. The animation routines allowed students to generate animations of their programs that resembled the ones presented in the lectures.