Web Application to Support the Learning of Programming Through the Graphic Visualization of Programs

This paper presents a web application to support the learning of programming at the undergraduate level, which allows students to graphically visualize through animations the execution of programs written in the Java programming language. The web application supports the understanding of programs and the basic con-cepts of programming, such as declaration of variables, assignment of values to variables, use of control structures, and calls to functions with parameters. The development of the web application, its architecture and the three systems that compose it are presented: data collection, processing and representation. The op-eration of the web application is shown through three programs, for which their execution is visualized graphically.Educational technology, education computing, software understanding, software visualization

Statistics SIG: identifying and addressing issues within statistics support

The Special Interest Group (SIG) in Statistics Support maintained by the sigma Network for excellence in mathematics and statistics support held a discussion workshop at the CETL-MSOR conference 2018. This was focused on identifying and addressing issues within statistics support and facilitated a very interesting and valuable sharing of experiences and suggestions for good practice in the provision of statistics support. Discussions were primarily focused on the limitations and scope of statistics support, and in particular the following issues were discussed: supporting student with statistics software, understanding the remit of statistics support, supporting students with choosing statistical techniques, as well as a short discussion on raising awareness of statistics support and evidencing its impact. One key action arising from the workshop was the proposal to run a workshop on statistics software.