Using Alice to Teach Novice Programmers OOP Concepts

One of the objective of the computer science (cs) educational community, when teaching object oriented programming (oop), is to improve programmer productivity, and improve modelling of the real-world using objects. some of the new techniques that allow the students to make the connection between steps in developing an algorithm for problem solving are centered on the visualization of objects and their behaviors using 3d animation environments, such as alice. it is the purpose of this research to assess the performance of novice programmers in kau’s female cs department in saudi arabia, and the effectiveness of the visualization environments –alice– in teaching inheritance as a concept of oop.