Alice is a modern day student’s companion and accomplice in conquering
all programming predicaments, making it easier for students to develop
interesting 3-D environments, writes Umer Nangiana
Dean Carnegie Mellon University Ilker Baybars. Photos by Nasar T K
Many students struggle with developing algorithms and figuring out how to apply problem solving techniques. But worry no more because ‘Alice’ is here. She’s here to enable students to learn these skills through 3-D animations and storytelling.
Available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch and German languages, Alice is a modern day student’s companion and accomplice in conquering all programming predicaments. Alice makes it easier for students to develop interesting 3-D environments and to explore the new medium of interactive 3-D graphics.
And, Alice has very well landed in the Middle East. Know who Alice is?
“Alice is a 3-D interactive tool. It allows you to create animations and the purpose of those animations is to help students learn programming concepts. It is not a tool to create animations but uses animations to teach programming,” Dr Saquib Razak, Assistant Teaching Professor, Carnegie Mellon University Qatar, tells Community.
Dr Razak and his team of faculty and students from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar recently introduced ‘Alice Middle East.’ The 3-D interactive educational animation software is designed to help primary and secondary school students learn the basics of computer programming and teach them how to apply logical thinking and problem solving techniques. It was recently demonstrated in the university.
“It is a tool to make conventional studies more visual. You cannot create movies out of every subject that you want to teach but you can create small simulations and small worlds where you can show to the students what happens instead of just telling them what happens,” says Dr Razak.
In the times before Alice or any such concepts, the students would not get to see the effects of a certain equation or a law of physics they were taught in the classroom. But, with Alice, you can put the equation into motion through programming.
A not just science subject, Alice has the ability to help teach students other non-scientific subjects as well.
“There is a lot of flexibility in the tool. There are a lot of equations that you can put. So if you want to teach mathematics, physics, etc., you can have the students see the effect of a phenomenon using Alice. You can also teach non-scientific subjects like English, social studies and others,” says the professor.
“For instance, if you are teaching American History, you can create in Alice a simulation based on that and show the students what happened. Also, for instance, if you are teaching them about religion, you can teach them how to pray. We actually have a model that has all the movements that can simulate prayers,” he says.
Alice was founded by the late Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. The program was named after Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland because of Carroll’s ability to communicate clearly in an entertaining way. The software has now been implemented in countries in the United States, Asia, South America, Central America, Europe and the Middle East with an estimated 1.4 million downloads per year.
How did Alice come to Qatar?
Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser expressed a keen interest in ‘Alice’ in 2008, which prompted Carnegie Mellon faculty to explore the possibility of developing a version of Alice for the Middle East. Funded by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) National Priorities Research Program, ‘Alice Middle East’ was first implemented in 2012 with an initial pilot program in Al-Arqam Academy, a private English-speaking school in Doha.
Since September 2014, computing is replacing ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in UK primary schools, so that children can be introduced to computational thinking from an early age. Carnegie Mellon faculty have been taking the lead, by introducing Alice as a tool to engage students in computing and also by training teachers in Qatar’s schools to implement and integrate the new curriculum.
In addition to supporting the new UK computing curriculum at Al-Arqam Academy, the Supreme Education Council (SEC) has piloted ‘Alice Middle East’ since September 2014 in two independent schools; Ali bin Abi-Talib Independent School (year 8) and Khalid bin Waleed Independent School (year 8).
The introduction of ‘Alice’ in independent SEC schools will help address a shortage of students in Qatar pursuing higher education in fields relating to computer science.
Nour Elhouda, a teacher at Al Arqam Academy, while commenting on the impact of Alice in her classroom said innovation is driven by expression. “Our future generation is highly creative and our teaching methods must support this. Alice has enabled students to express their ideas through storytelling, and animation whilst also learning programming skills along the way,” says Elhouda.
“Learning it was easy. It could be that I already had the programming background so it was enjoyable for me. Programing can be a hassle with all those errors sometimes but in a visual programme like Alice it becomes easier,” asserts Elhouda.
She noticed that even the students who did not have the background of programming found Alice easy to handle and understand as it is all about drag-and-drop elements into your scene.
Dr Razak was tasked with the localisation of the existing US version of ‘Alice’ for the Middle East. The goal of the project is to make it easy for young students to explore computer science concepts through developing interesting 3-D animations that are both fun to create and educational.
“For ‘Alice Middle East’ we developed 3-D models relevant to Qatari culture, including camels, land cruisers and Zubarah fort, making the student learning experience more contextual and helping bridge what a student has learned in a school setting with their home culture. We have also developed a textbook for Arabic-speaking students,” Razak says.
Dr Razak and his team require supporting the schools at least for the first two years where, in the beginning, they train teachers and we give them the curriculum. After a year, when the teachers learn to use it better and be able to make changes according to their needs, Dr Razak wants them to come back to the developers.
“So that we can learn from them because, you know, our expertise is in computing, not in teaching at that level. We want to learn this from the teachers on what we are doing wrong so that we can fix it for the next schools. This is how we did it. The one schools are using right now is a much improved curriculum,” points out Dr Razak.
“The development and implementation of Alice for the Middle East demonstrates Carnegie Mellon’s commitment to research that impacts the development of Qatar. We hope this creates a generation of technology innovators that will be at the forefront of Qatar’s future development,” says Ilker Baybars, Dean of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.
‘Alice Middle East’ is led by Director and Lead Project Investigator Wanda Dann and Dr Razak, the co-lead project investigator. The team consists of Huda Gedawy, a Carnegie Mellon computer science graduate and the curriculum developer; Aliaa Ahmed, current Carnegie Mellon computer science student and curriculum developer; Mounira Tlili, current Carnegie Mellon computer science student and curriculum developer; Don Slater, systems scientist; Fatma Almoghunni, character artist; Omar Ashour, and Mohammed Fituri, both Carnegie Mellon computer science students and character artists.
Carnegie Mellon faculty are also tracking the students’ progress through in-depth analysis which will measure the impact ‘Alice’ has had upon their performance in fields such as computing, technology and math.
Alice was demonstrated to secondary school students this weekend during CS4Qatar for Women, an outreach program that aims to introduce young women to computer science and explore career possibilities in the field.
As a global leader in education, Carnegie Mellon University is known for its creativity, collaboration across disciplines, and top programs in business, technology and the arts. The university has been home to some of the world’s most important thinkers, among them 19 Nobel Laureates and 12 Turing Award winners.
In 2004, Qatar Foundation invited Carnegie Mellon to join Education City, a groundbreaking centre for scholarship and research. The campus continues to grow, now providing prestigious education to more than 400 students from 40 countries. The university offers five undergraduate degree programs in Biological Sciences, Business Administration, Computational Biology, Computer Science and Information Systems.
You can experience ‘Alice Middle East’ by downloading the programme at http://alice.qatar.cmu.edu.
