C-Sheep: Controlling Entities in a 3D Virtual World as a Tool for Computer Science Education
Eike Falk Anderson, Leigh McLoughlin · Bournemouth University Research Online (Bournemouth University) · 2006
One of the challenges in teaching computer science in general and computer programming in particular is to maintain the interest of students, who often perceive the subject as difficult and tedious.To this end, we introduce C-Sheep, a mini-language-like system for computer science education, using a state of the art rendering engine, usually found in entertainment systems.The intention is to motivate students to spend more time programming, which can be achieved by providing an enjoyable experience.In the C-Sheep system this is aided by the visual gimmickry of modern computer games, which allows programs to provide instant visualisation of algorithms.This visual feedback is invaluable to the understanding of how the algorithm works, and -if there are unintended resultshow errors in the program can be debugged.