An Animated Tutoring System for Interactive Learning of Nonlinear Data Structures

Abstract

This paper presents an interactive, user-friendly tutoring system, which can be used to enhance students' understanding of the principles behind data structures. The system has the capability to display data structures graphically as well as providing the facility to allow users to perform the basic operations on the data structure generated. An animation-based approach has been developed to provide a step-by-step illustration of how various traversal techniques are performed in the context of binary search and AVL trees data structure. The system has a tutorial mode incorporating exercises, where students can learn basic concepts operations associated with each data structure. The evaluation was carried out by computer science undergraduate students in the School of Computing and Mathematics. It is generally acknowledged that the system was very useful in teaching students about data structures. This system can be used as an effective supplement to traditional teaching methods.

Keywords:

• tutoring system
• animation
• data structures
• Java programming