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100 10 PROMOTING ALGORITHMIC/COMPUTATIONAL THINKING... the traditional. In order to test if the created “algorithmic dances” have the potential to provide novelty, incongruity, and surprise (Keller, 1983; Berlyne, 1960), we posted them on the YouTube website. Users’ reactions confirmed our expectations (for details, see Chapter 7). Artistic elements play a key role in attracting humanities-oriented people. The presence of culture may also promote emotional motivation. — Sustaining motivation: The role of the “animation phase” is to help students to focus on the key elements of the algorithm (Mayer, 2003; Kalyuga, Chandler, & Sweller, 1999) and to prepare them for the “doing phases”. During the “doing phases” (reconstruction, “white-box orchestration”, “black-box orchestration”) of the e-learning session, students are invited to actively participate in the animations (Mayer & Chandler, 2001) according to the principle of moderate-progressive challenge. According to constructivist learning theory, learning from their experiences and applying the knowledge they have just gained may result in more effective learning (Jonassen, Peck, & Wilson, 1999). — In the conclusion part, the “sorting movie” that we created (displaying the parallel sorting of the six colour scales) aims to arouse aesthetic emotions and to provide a global view of the studied topic. Aesthetic emotions can contribute to a great ending to the learning experience (Parrish, 2009; Riaz, Rambli, Salleh, & Mushtaq, 2011). As we mentioned above, two other important motivational factors related to the moderate challenge are anxiety (fear of failure) and probability of success. In line with Keller’s ARCS (attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction) model of motivation (Keller, 1987), in order to guarantee that students can accomplish the tasks (and to reduce anxiety), we provided them with help buttons that indicate the next operation to be performed. Moreover, each animation task can be repeated (for different randomly generated inputs) until it is solved correctly and without using the help buttons. This option aims to promote the desired sense of achievement. 10.4 The experiment With respect to the requirement of “carefully selected examples”, we have chosen sorting algorithms because these are probably the most directly perceived computer algorithms by IT users. Sorting a list is a common operation in many fields of work and is one of the most fundamental problems in CS. As mentioned above, the AlgoRythmics learning environment has been designed to introduce students to the micro-world of comparison-based sorting algorithms. Bubble sorting (“optimized” version) was selected for this experiment, too, since it applies a relatively easily detectable algorithmic pattern (it compares and swaps
