A preliminary empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of a finite state automaton animator

Abstract

The FSA Simulator is a Java program created to allow computer science students to work and experiment with finite state automata (FSAs). One of its unique features is the ability to compare the languages of two FSAs. This FSA comparison feature lets the software give students feedback about the accuracy of their work as they do exercises, guiding them toward a correct solution. This paper discusses some preliminary experiments performed to determine the effect of this feedback mechanism on students' learning. Two experimental labs were conducted, the results of which suggest that this feature improved students' success rate when doing exercises, but did not appear to significantly improve the students' performance when the comparison feature was not available.