Online Python Tutor: Embeddable Web-Based Program Visualization for CS Education
Venue
Proceedings of the ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), ACM (2013) (to appear)
Publication Year
2013
Authors
BibTeX
Abstract
This paper presents Online Python Tutor, a web-based program visualization tool for
Python, which is becoming a popular language for teaching introductory CS courses.
Using this tool, teachers and students can write Python programs directly in the
web browser (without installing any plugins), step forwards and backwards through
execution to view the run-time state of data structures, and share their program
visualizations on the web. In the past three years, over 200,000 people have used
Online Python Tutor to visualize their programs. In addition, instructors in a
dozen universities such as UC Berkeley, MIT, the University of Washington, and the
University of Waterloo have used it in their CS1 courses. Finally, Online Python
Tutor visualizations have been embedded within three web-based digital Python
textbook projects, which collectively attract around 16,000 viewers per month and
are being used in at least 25 universities. Online Python Tutor is free and open
source software, available at pythontutor.com
