Can we teach algorithm development skills?

Often when designing an educational tool, the focus is primarily on how well the tool helps the student learn a concept. However, always in educational research there is an underlying desire to determine what factors actually influence student learning. This is because an understanding of these factors can lead to the design of more effective tools/techniques. The focus of our research has been on developing a tool to help students learn algorithm design. The ability to design an algorithm for a given problem is one of the most important, and unfortunately one of the most difficult to accomplish, learning outcomes of computer science courses. It has previously been shown [13] that students who use AlgoTutor, a Web-based algorithm development tutor, are significantly more likely to think that algorithm design prior to coding is important and to have confidence in their own ability to design an algorithm. From follow up studies, we have found that students who have used AlgoTutor in introductory computer science classes are not only more confident in their ability to design an algorithm, but also more likely to design a correct algorithm than those who have not used AlgoTutor. Additionally, we show that the course management utility for the AlgoTutor system can be used to investigate questions about factors that influence student learning. As an example we investigate the question, "how much is too much help and how much is not enough help if a student is having difficulty solving a problem?"