A modern approach to supporting program visualization: from a 2D notation to 3D representations using augmented reality

作     者：Schez-Sobrino, Santiago Garcia, Maria A. Lacave, Carmen Molina, Ana I. Glez-Morcillo, Carlos Vallejo, David Redondo, Miguel A. 

作者机构：Univ Castilla La Mancha Spain Dept Informat Technol & Syst Paseo Univ 4 Ciudad Real 13071 Spain 

出 版 物：《MULTIMEDIA TOOLS AND APPLICATIONS》 (多媒体工具和应用)

年 卷 期：2021年第80卷第1期

页      面：543-574页

核心收录：

学科分类：0808[工学-电气工程] 08[工学] 0835[工学-软件工程] 0812[工学-计算机科学与技术（可授工学、理学学位）] 

基　　金：Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness European Regional Development Fund [TIN2015-66731-C2-2-R] 

主　　题：Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) Program visualization Programming learning Three-dimensional displays Augmented reality Eclipse 

摘      要：The visualization of programs and algorithms has been demonstrated to be essential when learning to program. Nevertheless, existing graphic representations require a high level of abstraction that most beginner programmers cannot understand. Current state-of-the-art approaches provide promising alternatives, but a significant part leaves the advantages of graphic representation in the background. These advantages include abstracting the source code by means of symbols that make them easier to understand without previous training. This work introduces the evolution of a 2-D graphic notation to a 3-D environment, which represents an improvement to a complete platform for collaborative programming learning through problem solving, named COLLECE-2.0. This improvement provides the platform with capabilities to visualize programs through augmented reality by using a new set of graphic representations, which are based on roads and traffic signs in the context of programming learning. These visual models have been evaluated by Computer Science students to know whether the proposed notation is intuitive and useful. The obtained results show that the proposed notation is suitable for representing programming concepts and easy to understand. We also present a series of improvements, integrated as a new subsystem in the aforementioned platform, which allows the automatic construction of 3-D visualizations on an augmented reality environment. These visualizations use the proposed notation and leverage the scalability and architecture of COLLECE-2.0.