The AlgoViz Portal: Lowering the Barriers for Entry into an Online Educational Community

While algorithm visualizations (AVs) are viewed as having potential for improving computer science education, the rate of AV use has progressed little from the mid 1990s.  CS faculty indicate that impediments to successful use of AVs include: difficulties in finding quality AVs on desired topics; difficulties in adapting AVs to the classroom; and lack of knowledge on their deployment. Many existing AVs are of little pedagogical value, and there is poor distribution of topical coverage.

The problem is not lack of AVs or AV collections. We need to better focus the efforts of AV developers and users. We seek to establish a new model for online educational communities, less focussed on the "digital library" model of information found at a website. The focus will be on community-driven content through members' discussions, reviews, and ratings of content. To gain sufficient community input, we must actively lower barriers to  participation by incorporating content and community input into the notification streams for our community members. This includes traditional  dissemination mechanisms (content websites, forums, email, online blogs, newsletters) and newer notification streams (Twitter, social networking sites  where users can subscribe to receive notification as part of their everyday online life). Our prototype portal (http://algoviz.org) distributes information through numerous channels. Our innovations will be directly applicable to a broad range of educational communities within Ensemble and  NSDL.