The effect of integrating an Iconic programming notation into CS1

Abstract

Increasing pressure from national government to improve throughput at South African tertiary education institutions presents challenges to educators of CS1 courses. In response, educators must adopt effective methods and strategies that encourage students to be successful in such courses. An approach that seeks to increase and maintain satisfactory throughput is the modification of the teaching model in these courses by adjusting presentation techniques. This paper reports on a study into the effect of integrating an experimental iconic programming notation and associated development environment with existing conventional textual technological support in the teaching model of a CS1 course. The paper reports on the comparison of the performance achievement of students using only conventional textual technological support with that of students using the integrated iconic and conventional textual technological support. The findings suggest strong evidence that the performance achievement of students in a CS1 course improves significantly with the inclusion of iconic technological support in the teaching model. Considerably more students using the integrated form of technological support are in fact successful in the CS1 course when compared with their counterparts who use conventional textual technological support only.

Using flowchart-based programming environments for simplifying programming and software engineering processes

“…B# [32] was designed at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University with the aim of supporting the initial stages of a CS1 course. B# incorporates an iconic language and an integrated programming environment.…”

“…An empirical study with 59 first year students from the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa was carried out during 2003 [32]. The students formed two groups: the control group that used exclusively the Delphi Enterprise IDE based on a textual programming notation (PASCAL) and the treatment group that used both B# and the Delphi Enterprise IDE.…”

“…In this case, the creators of the corresponding environments (i.e. BACCII/BACCII++, B#) refer to the notation used with the term iconic programming language ( [8], [32]). Iconic programming languages, usually, have an extended instruction set, supporting the declaration of variables, manipulation of text files and generally constructs that are not commonly depicted in flowcharts.…”

“…Especially in the case of SICAS even backward step by step execution is possible, according to its developers [25]. Moreover, in the case of B# users can execute the Borland Pascal source code automatically generated from the flowchart [32], while in ProgrAnimate [37] a synchronized step by step execution of both the flowchart and the code automatically generated in the selected language is offered. In Iconic Programmer explanatory visualization is used for presenting explanatory messages in natural language.…”

Toward a more effective visualization tool to teach novice programmers

“…Algorithm visualization systems and techniques have been introduced in a number of curricula to increase learner engagement and improve pedagogical processes [4,6,7,8,9,12]. At the U.S. Military Academy (USMA), we teach a core IT course that is required for all first year students.…”