Students in an introductory computer science survey course for non-majors used the 3-D interactive programming environment Alice for their programming module. With Alice, students create animated worlds using a variety of objects and easily accessed programming constructs. Alice has previously been used successfully to provide a gentle introduction to computer programming in a fun and enjoyable way, and has been shown to increase retention in computer programming courses. However, use of Alice appears to be limited as there is little to be found in the literature regarding its use in information technology courses. This lack of data prompted a study to determine if Alice is a suitable tool to introduce computer programming to non-majors in a friendly and inclusive way. This paper reports on the use of Alice with approximately 100 students enrolled in a nonmajors computer science course. Students were surveyed about their attitudes toward computer programming before and after using Alice. Descriptive data indicate that Alice does increase student enjoyment and promote positive attitudes toward programming.

Scratch is the latest iteration in a series of animation tools aimed at teaching programming skills. Scratch, in particular, aims not only to teach technical skills, but also skills related to collaboration and code reuse. In order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Scratch relative to these goals, we have performed an empirical field study of Scratch animations and associated user comments from the online animation repository. Overall, we found that Scratch represents substantial progress toward its designers ’ goals, though we also identified several opportunities for significant improvement. In particular, many Scratch programs revealed significant technical mastery of the programming environment by programmers, and some animations even demonstrated design patterns. On the other hand, while the Scratch repository has successfully served as a supportive environment for generating constructive feedback among users, we did not find any occasions within our sample where this interaction led to online collaboration. In addition, we found low levels of code reuse, in terms of both frequency and success. Based on these results, we identify implications for improving the design of animation tools, for using these tools to teach programming skills, and for fostering successful collaboration and code reuse among end-user programmers.