The educational impact of visualization depends not only on how well students learn when they use it, but also on how widely it is used by instructors. Instructors believe that visualization helps students learn. The integration of visualization techniques in classroom instruction, however, has fallen far short of its potential. This paper considers this disconnect, identifying its cause in a failure to understand the needs of a key member in the hierarchy of stakeholders, namely the instructor. We describe these needs and o#er guidelines for both the e#ective deployment of visualizations and the evaluation of instructor satisfaction. We then consider di#erent forms of evaluation and the impact of student learning styles on learner outcomes.

This article presents the scripting language ANIMALSCRIPT that extends the capabilities of the ANIMAL visualization system [Rling et al. 00]. ANIMALSCRIPT offers the basic operations required for software visualization, but can easily be adapted to address other context-specific requirements. For example, ANIMALSCRIPT supports relative object placement and addresses internationalization issues

The University of Joensuu started to offer virtual Computer Science studies to high school students in the surrounding rural area of Joensuu beginning in fall 2000. We evaluated the first programming course and modified the course based on the analyzed feedback of the students who dropped out. In fall 2001, we branched out to the rural region of a neighboring province and evaluated the differences between the new and old areas. The percentage of dropouts is somewhat larger in the new area. The course arrangements are the same in both areas, but we found factors, such as the knowledge of the course standards, the experience and attitudes of tutor-teachers, the students' own activities, as well as the students' earlier experience in programming, which may have influenced the dropout phenomenon. We are using stepwise dropout treatment during the first programming course.

Learning programming languages is a demanding task for both the student and the teacher. The proposed computerbased system offers time- and place- independent learning environment capable for automatic assessment of student work via the Internet. It relives teachers from timeconsuming procedure of exercise evaluation, and provides for higher quality teaching and course development. The system can be efficiently used within the existing programming languages courses taught in Universities. It is also suitable as a standalone solution for short introductory programming courses for summer schools, high schools or interested individuals.

Abstract. The paper introduces Verificator, our learning programming interface aimed for learning programming in C++ at the university beginners ’ level. In teaching programming some specific problems concerning the teaching itself as well as the organization of the teaching process need to be considered. One of the biggest problems is that students tend to adopt certain bad programming habits in their attempt to more easily deal with their examinations, such as trying to write programs without any syntax and logical checking. It is very hard to help them correct those errors once they are deeply rooted. Our students ’ web questionnaire and its results show that the majority of problems in learning programming among our students arise from the gap between the understanding of programming language syntax and problem-solving algorithms. Verificator prevents students from making a lot of errors they are likely to make in learning programming and helps them to learn programming language syntax and adopt good programming habits. Keywords: learning programming, teaching software, Verificator. 1.