An Ideal van Hiele Webbased Model for Computer
Programming Learning and
Teaching to Promote
Collaborative Learning
Dr. J. Wey Chen, Professor
Department of Information Management
Southern Taiwan University of Technology
Introduction
• van Hiele model
– adopted by Soviet educators for use in their
geometry curriculum
– in recent years, interest has risen in the United
States (NCTM, 1989)
– be applied to economics and chemistry in
Holland
– be verified by Fuys, Geddes, Lovett, and
Tischler(1988) and Usiskin(1982)
Van Hiele Model
• involving five levels of thought development in geometry
• focused on the role of instruction in teaching geometry and
the role of instruction in helping students move from one
level to the next
• be first reported in companion dissertation at the
University of Utrecht in 1957 ( van Hiele, 1957)
• three aspects
– insight
– Obstacles (levels)
• recognition, analysis, ordering, deduction, and rigor
– Instruction (phases)
• information, directed orientation, explication, free orientation, and
integration
An Idiosyncratic View of Teaching
Programming
• Boulay(1989) thought the difficulties of
learning programming can be categorized
into five areas
• the programming environment factor which
encompasses behavior of the physical
machine and the semantics of the notional
machine be considered in an effective
instructional system design
Acquisition for Programming
Knowledge and Skills
• Rogalski and Samurcay (1990)
COGNITIVE ACTIVITIES CONDITIONS FOR PROGRAMMING
COGNITIVE TOOLS
- methods
- environments
- job aids
PROBLEM SOLVING
- categorization
- operative ways
EXPERIENCE & PRACTICE
- library of familiar functions
- universe of well known objects
- set of already solved problems
- compiled strategies
- encapsulated notion
KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURE
- concepts
- Relations (between)
- Operations (on)
- notations
DOMAIN REQUIREMENTS
•
Acquisition for Programming
Knowledge and Skills
Barnes, Fincher and Thompson(1997) , four-stage process of problem-solving
–
Understanding
•
•
•
–
Design
•
•
–
Completing
Adaptation to problem
Review
Testing
•
•
Finding related problems and solutions
Checking against I/O
Writing
•
•
–
–
Structuring and dividing
Clarifying
Finding sample I/O
Summarizing lessons
Booth(1992) found that they conceived learning programming in four ways
–
–
–
–
Learning a programming language
Learning to write programs in a programming language
Learning to solve problem in the form of programs
Becoming part of the programming community
The Modified van Hiele Model
•
three major elements
– the nature of insight
– the levels of thought
– the phases of learning
•
five-levels of thought
–
–
–
–
–
•
visual and orientation
descriptive and relations
implications
formal logic modification and analogy
abstraction and modeling
five sequential instructional steps
–
–
–
–
–
information
guided orientation
explication
free orientation
integration
The Behaviors at Each Modified
van Hiele Level
•
•
•
•
First Level (Visual)
Second Level (Descriptive)
Third Level (Theoretical)
Fourth Level (Formal logic Modification &
Analogy)
• Fifth Level (Abstraction & Modeling)
Experimental Design and Controls
• Follow-up interview
The van Heile Web-based Model
• The van Heile Web-based project to promote
collaborative learning relies on six technologies
– E-mail
– Discussion board
– Internet assignment units
– Tutorial unit
– Quick-run unit
– Expert template
The Architectural Structure of the
van Hiele Web-based Project
Discussion Board
Tutorial Unit
Example
Quick-run Unit
Expert Template
Conclusions
• We hope the proposed Modified van Hiele Model for
Computer Science Teaching can help unveil the mystery of
the “hidden mind” and provide a logical link for students
to inductively learn problem-solving and programming
skills
• The success of this model is attributed to the extensive
review of the available literature and to the exploratory
interviews with students who participated in the first phase
of study
• The exploratory interviews with students and the
observations generated a set of constructive data for us to
devise a functional environment to support collaboration
for learning programming in our second phase of study