The Auxiliary Role of Information Technology in Teaching: Enhancing Programming Course Using Alice.

Teaching and learning programming are the fun and also pain part for instructors and students in academic institutions, from the famous "Hello World" simple codes to advanced feature application software, there is a long and tough way to go for most of the students. Within limited teaching hours, instructor's presentation and explanation of the computer language are not attractive enough to raise and improve students' interest for learning proactively as students have different learning styles [1]. From the observation and the query, most students are more comfortable with learning by visual presentation--diagrams, video, animation, verbal explanation and trying things from their own interesting story. This paper describes a teaching approach for Java programming by using Alice--an innovative 3D programming environment that make it easy to help students learn fundamental programming concept in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games [2]. Evidence of students performance in learning Object-Oriented programming as a result of this approach are shown in this paper by statistical data that gathered, summarized and observed from fall semester of 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]