Profiling styles of use in Alice: Identifying patterns of use by observing participants in workshops with Alice

During workshops on computer animation using Alice, a free platform for three dimensional computer animation created by Carnegie Mellon University, we detected and observed a series of different patterns of use of the platform by attendants. Most participants would start following instructions as precisely as possible. Within a short time some would divert to create visually attractive scenes worrying little about movement and action, others would put two or more characters in the scene and make them talk telling a story, and a fourth group would explore by their own advanced features and functions of Alice well beyond the content of the workshop creating complex and action-rich animations. As these styles kept appearing in every event, a more systematic observation was attempted by designing a form for observers and a survey for participants. Although we have had only one opportunity to test our instruments, we believe that the study is worth continuing and the results may turn revealing not only for Alice but for other block programming environments. In this article we describe the styles observed and the instruments designed for observation. The preliminary results are also discussed.