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OGRE: Three-Dimensional Program Visualization for Novice Programmers

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Abstract

As demonstrated in our earlier paper (Milne and Rowe, 2002), students learning object-oriented programming find topics related to the computer's handling of memory the most difficult to understand. Our results indicated that a visualization of a running object-oriented program, with particular emphasis on the display of how objects are related to each other in memory, would help students to learn these topics.

Here we describe OGRE (Object-oriented GRaphical Environment) – a program visualization tool that has been developed to specifically address these memory related issues by providing three-dimensional, interactive visualizations that aid higher-level understanding of a program's execution in memory. OGRE has been evaluated with positive results that show significant improvements in students' understanding of C++'s memory-related topics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Computing, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, UK E-mail

    Iain Milne & Glenn Rowe

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  1. Iain Milne
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  2. Glenn Rowe
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Milne, I., Rowe, G. OGRE: Three-Dimensional Program Visualization for Novice Programmers. Education and Information Technologies 9, 219–237 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:EAIT.0000042041.04999.17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:EAIT.0000042041.04999.17

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