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Abstract Interactive visualizations were developed to improve the learning of list-based iteration by students in an introductory Computer Science course for non-majors. An initial quantitative evaluation of the visualizations raised questions about their long-term effectiveness and ease of use. A complementary qualitative study was done to gain deeper insight into the experiences of students. The results of this study, reported here, showed that students had highly varied strategies for using the visualizations, that context was an important factor in determining the visualizations' helpfulness, and that students had an approach to understanding the visualizations that was both helpful and problematic. These findings help to inform visualization and curriculum designers about student attitudes and strategies in using course materials.
Domino et al. (Tue,) studied this question.