Integrated View at the MTCS Course Organization: The Case of Recursion - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 228

Table 12.4 Homework about recursion models
Worksheet—models for recursion
Find in the literature at least one model that explains recursion to learners and was
not presented in the course (i.e., not the little people metaphor or the top-down frames
model). Indicate the paper title, authors, and abstract.
Write a short description of the model and illustrate it on at least one specific recursive
program/method.
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the model.
Prepare a short (10-15 min) presentation of the model to be presented in the course (or,
alternatively: prepare a poster to be presented in the course).

12.6 How Does Recursion Sound? 9

Section 5.5 (Debugging) and Activity 65 (The musical song debugging activity,
Sect. 8.4) aim at increasing learners' awareness to the importance of debugging,
debugging processes, and the role of debugging in learning processes. Activity 65
also illustrates the use of the computer lab in computer science education.
In this section, we illustrate how the use of the computer lab can enhance learn-
ers' understanding of recursion. For this purpose, we use colors and music for the
examination of trees and fractals which are two well-known recursive structures.
We suggest that the examination of these recursive structures may foster also learn-
ers' general understanding of the concept of recursion.
This approach that fosters the use of colors and sounds relies on the common
agreement that, similar to the convention that one picture is worth 1000 words,
one musical note is worth at least 100 words. Just like visualization, music is a
powerful way to activate people's senses, change people's mental moods, convey
messages quickly (e.g., in horror movies), and provide information that some-
times is very difficult, or even impossible, to convey by other means. In this
spirit, Vickers ( 1999 ) claims that “Although sound is not visible we are still able
to construct mental images when presented with particular sounds or pieces of
music.” (p. 15).
Activity 96 that focuses on fractals and trees is based on three stages. In addition,
if the musical debugging activity (see Activity 65 in Sect. 8.4) has not been facili-
tated yet in the MTCS course, it is recommended to ask students to read the paper
on song debugging (Lapidot and Hazzan 2005 ).

9 Based on Lapidot and Hazzan ( 2005 ) ﾩ 2005 ACM, Inc. Included here by permission.