The use of Collaborative Virtual Environments to provide student's contextualisation in programming

Micaela Esteves (1) , Leonel Morgado (2) , Paulo Martins (2) , Benjamim Fonseca (2)

1 Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão
2 Department of Engenharias [Vila Real]

Experience has shown that one of the biggest difficulties that students find while learning programming languages is the understanding of its abstract concepts, and this difficulty translates into a lack of motivation for learning. We propose the use of a collaborative virtual environment to allow students to program within the context of a business-like professional programming environment, akin to that found in a software house, in order to make abstract concepts and requirements more concrete and therefore increase the learning effectiveness and students' motivation. This paper includes a reflection about the features that would be required of such a virtual environment in order to improve the learning experience for students of computer programming.

Keywords: contexts; collaborative virtual environments (CVE); learning programming

Domains: Computer Science [cs]; Technology for Human Learning

Micaela Esteves, Leonel Morgado, Paulo Martins, Benjamim Fonseca. The use of Collaborative Virtual Environments to provide student's contextualisation in programming. m-ICTE 2006, IV INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MULTIMEDIA AND INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION, 2006, Seville, Spain. pp.283. ⟨hal-00190288⟩