A Retrospective Study for the Selection of Suitable Programming Language for the High Schools in Pakistan

Abstract

Computer programming is now increasingly becoming a compulsory subject at the high school level. The main purpose of the introduction of programming languages at this stage is to develop logic and reasoning skills that may help students in their ordinary activities. Pakistani schools have also started introducing computer programming at the high school level. GWBasic and C are two major languages being used to teach this introductory course. This paper presents the difficulties faced by the students to learn programming languages in the high schools of Pakistan while learning in any of these two languages. To this end, the content of the course has been divided into three difficulty levels. A survey based approach has been employed to get useful data from the students who have been taught this course in either of the aforementioned languages. A detailed questionnaire has been created and is filled by the student to express the ease of learning for different concepts. The collected data enables us to perform a retrospective analysis to figure out as to which language offers a smoother and easier learning curve at a given level. The results show that GWBasic is relatively easier language for the students to learn introductory course in computer programming. The accumulated data also reveals that the students struggle to learn advanced concepts that invites for a revision of curriculum or pedagogical practices being followed to teach this course.