An instructor's guide to design Web-based algorithm animations

Abstract

Much research effort was directed in last years to address two key issues in Web-based algorithm animations: lack of evidence of their educational benefit, and the considerable effort put on the part of instructors to construct animations. Consequently, there is a valuable corpus of lessons learnt to design effective algorithm animations, but these recommendations are very general. The designer of an animation has no guide for fine-grain decisions, which often are the basis of a successful animation. The goal of this study is to deepen in these issues by identifying good choices for the number of animations, structure and size of an animation, and size and value of input data. We describe the problem, our hypothesis and our findings, written as an instructor's guide for the design of educationally effective animations. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.