Capturing and Characterising Notional Machines

ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE), pp. 502–503

Abstract

A notional machine is a pedagogic device to assist the understanding of some aspect of programs or programming. It is typically used to support explaining a programming construct, or the user-understandable semantics of a program. For example, a variable is like a box with a label, and assignment copies or moves a value into that box. This working group will capture examples of notional machines from actual pedagogical practice, as expressed in textbooks (or other teaching materials) or used in the classroom. We will interview at least 30 teachers about their experience with, and perceptions of, the use of notional machines in teaching. Using the interviews, we will work on devising and refining a form to characterise essential features of notional machines. We will also attempt to relate them to each other to describe potential learning sequences or progressions. The working group report will contain descriptions of notional machines used at different levels in education, in different countries, by many teachers. Capturing and Characterising Notional Machines Sally Fincher, Johan Jeuring, Craig S Miller Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). ITiCSE 2020,,Trondheim, Norway © 2020 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). 978-1-4503-0000-0/18/06...$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/1234567890 The resulting catalogue of notional machines will allow a teacher to select a machine for a particular use, permit comparison between them, and provide a starting point for further categorization and analysis of notional machines. Additionally, we will make more theoretical explorations. We will explore a variety of presentational formats, examining what is necessary and what superfluous; we will look for dimensions of comparison and will examine how notional machines are instantiated across the discipline. We argue that the creation and use of notional machines is potentially a signature pedagogy for computing [1] and that creating and using notional machines represents a certain level of pedagogic sophistication that might be an indicator of pedagogic content knowledge (PCK).

Authors 12

1. Sally A. Fincher

   University of Kent

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom

2. Johan T. Jeuring

   Utrecht University

   Affiliation as printed

   Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands

3. Craig S. Miller

   DePaul University

   Affiliation as printed

   DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA

4. Peter Donaldson

   University of Glasgow

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland Uk

5. Benedict du Boulay

   University of Sussex

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

6. Matthias Hauswirth

   Università della Svizzera italiana

   Affiliation as printed

   USI Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland

7. Arto Hellas

   Aalto University

   Affiliation as printed

   Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

8. Felienne Hermans Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

9. Colleen M. Lewis

   Harvey Mudd College

   Affiliation as printed

   Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA, USA

10. Andreas Mühling

    Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel

    Affiliation as printed

    Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

11. Janice L. Pearce

    Berea College

    Affiliation as printed

    Berea College, Berea, KY, USA

12. Andrew Petersen

    University of Toronto

    Affiliation as printed

    University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada