The essence of recursion: reduction, delegation, and visualization
Abdelaziz Fellah, Ajay Bandi · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2018
Recursion remains one of the most challenging concepts for students to comprehend adequately and educators to teach effectively. In this paper, we propose a learning approach for teaching recursion and highlighting the importance of recursive thinking and abstraction skills in problem solving through a well-defined sequence of steps. Furthermore, this approach is complemented by a 2D computational model and simulation tool, RDViz. This software interactively integrates base cases and recursive invocations, and it displays the sequence of states of the recursive process before exposing students to coding. The results of our case studies have shown evidence that all students achieved a substantial gain in recursive computations as well as appropriate basic abstraction skills.