Alice Workshop Takes Teachers Through the Looking Glass of Programming

Nearly 50 high school teachers and university faculty took part in a three-day “Learning to Program with Alice” workshop on the California State University, Dominguez Hills campus last weekend.

“Alice” is a free educational program designed to make learning computer programming easier and produced by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Stage 3 Research Group. Named for the character in the Lewis Carroll books “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” — Alice uses storytelling and graphics as its instructional focus. Students create animated movies and simple video games and, in the process, learned the basics of computer science and computer programming.

“A lot of students have problems learning computer science because the language is really very difficult,” says Mohsen Beheshti, chair of the Dominguez Hills computer science department. “Alice is very user friendly because there is very limited syntax involved. They can learn the concepts of the program without having to learn the language.”

Beheshti said he was happy his department could host the workshop, not only for the instructional applications it provided for teachers but also because it allowed him to showcase the department, which launches its master’s degree in computer science this fall and is hoping to offer a new bachelor’s degree in computer technology.

“It’s a win-win for us in many ways,” he says. “Right now, there are not a lot of high school teachers who can teach computer science. This workshop will help them to teach the new technologies so that their students will be better prepared when they get to college.”

Stephen Cooper, associate professor of mathematics and computer science and director of the Center for Visualization at St. Joseph's University, who taught at the workshop, echoes Beheshti’s sentiments, saying that “Cal State Dominguez Hills will be seen by faculty … as a leader in curricular innovation in computing.”

The workshop was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation in association with Carnegie Mellon University and St. Joseph’s University.

For additional information on Alice, visit alice.org.

- Amy Bentley-Smith and Joanie Harmon