Learning Recursion with 3D Turtle Graphics in a Virtual Reality Environment Öffentlichkeit
Sun, Joshua (Spring 2025)
Abstract
Turtle graphics is a pedagogical tool that has been proven effective to teach various programming concepts. In its original formulation, students write programs that move an automaton (the Turtle) on a 2-dimensional (2D) screen using sequences of commands. There have been various attempts at creating 3-dimensional (3D) versions of the turtle; and, to our knowledge, there is currently only one 3D programming turtle in Virtual Reality (VR). Recursion is a fundamental and challenging concept in Computer Science education. While the traditional 2D Turtle has been widely used to teach recursion, using a 3D Turtle is way less common for this purpose.
We designed a sequence of activities that students would do to learn recursion, using the 2D Turtle. Next, we then developed alternatives that work in 3D and VR. After, we then developed a 3D Turtle that could be viewed in VR to fit all the activities. We tested our system with two groups of students: 2D, and 3D/VR groups. Students completed a pre-survey and pre-quiz, performed the activities, and took a post-quiz and post-survey.
From our study, we saw that, while students did improve in their understanding of recursion, there was very little difference in improvement between the 2D and 3D/VR students. Our experiments highlighted several lessons in using the 3D/VR Turtle. First, compared to 2D, 3D rotations are much more difficult to visualize, and they require students to be comfortable rotating axes and bases. Second, the usage of VR should be more streamlined: students were asked to code in a text editor, and take the VR headset on and off while working through the activities. The barrier between coding and viewing the turtle reduced enjoyment of the activity. Third, our activities may have not used the 3D-VR space to its fullest potential. This gave us more ideas on future activities tailored more specifically for the 3D/VR Turtle.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Background
2.1 Difficulties in Teaching Recursion
2.2 The Turtle as Pedagogical Tool
2.3 Turtles All the Way Down
3 Approach
3.1 Activity Design
3.2 The Turtle Program and Client
3.3 Survey and Quizzes
4 Experiments and Analysis
5 Conclusion
A Appendix
A.1 Turtle Activities (2D)
A.2 Turtle Activities (3D)
A.3 Pre-Quiz Questions
A.4 Post-Quiz Questions
A.5 Pre-Survey Questions
A.6 Turtle JSON API
A.7 Source Code
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