Anchor garden
Motoki Miura, Taro Sugihara, Susumu Kunifuji · 2009
We propose Anchor Garden (AG), an interactive workbench software for learning fundamentals of data structures with the concepts of type, variable, object, and their relations in a strongly typed object-oriented programming language (OOPL) such as Java or C#. Learners can approach the basic data-handling concepts of OOPLs by direct manipulation of graphical models in AG. In addition, the learner can correlate his/her manipulation and notation of source code because AG automatically generates appropriate source-code corresponding to this manipulation. Experimental results showed a tendency of a learning effect with AG and high correlations between concept understanding and programming ability. Thus, AG has the potential to enhance the programming ability of novice programmers.