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Computer programming is as much an art as it is a science. When teaching computer programming at a distance, instructors often rely on step-by-step tutorials to illustrate programming concepts. However, these programming concepts are not always easy to understand from tutorial instructions. Sometimes students need a visual explanation to illustrate some of the complex ideas. Since a distance learning course must rely on many asynchronous technologies, instructors may adopt to use instructional video or voice-enhanced animation to communicate those complex ideas.  Voice-enhanced animations can be a powerful instructional tool in a computer programming course. Consider the following scenario: a professor needs to communicate the difference between pass-by value versus pass-by reference when dealing with functions. This is often a topic students struggle with when covering functions. One way to communicate the idea would be to write a length document and post it to a course management system to supplement the textbook materials. Another way would be to create a simple flash animation that illustrates a few examples while narrating the important points. Plenty of research has been conducted on the instructional value of multimedia with respect to both animation and narration in multimedia materials. For instance, Mayer has devised a number of principles, such as the redundancy or modality principles, to help guide the development of multimedia materials. This body of knowledge is useful for the development of materials to instruct computer programming at a distance. Consequently, a whole line of inquiry has grown from this realm known as algorithm visualization. |