In the past decade, improvements have been made to the environments used for introductory programming education, including by the introduction of visual programming languages such as Squeak and Scratch. However, migration from these languages to text-based programming languages such as C and Java is still a problem. Hence, using the OpenBlocks framework proposed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, we developed a system named BlockEditor, which can translate bidirectionally between Block (the block language used here) and Java. We conducted an empirical study of this system in an introductory programming course taken by approximately 100 university students not majoring in computer science. When students were given opportunities to select the language to solve their programming assignments, we traced their selection by tracking working time with BlockEditor or Java for each individual student. The results illustrate the nature of the seamless migration from Block to Java, and show that there is great diversity in the timing and speed of migration to Java by each individual. Additionally, we found that students with low selfevaluation of their skill chose to use Block at a significantly higher rate than did students with high self-evaluation. This suggests that BlockEditor can act as scaffolding for students by promoting mixed programming between Block and Java in their migration phase.
Abstract:Informatics Education for high schools started in 2003 in Japan. Although it is compulsory, university freshmen in 2006 are expected to have large differences in their computer literacy competency. One of the reasons for this is that many teachers have no technical knowledge of Informatics because they were licensed by taking only ninety hours of training during their summer vacation. It is necessary for universities in Japan to classify their freshmen with respect to their computer literacy to be able to provide appropriate education. We have developed a testing system for this but further improvement is required due to quality variations of the test. Appropriate classification of the problems is also required for giving good advice for the student to learn properly. We are developing a Learning Management System (LMS), which supports not only students but also the collaborative works of teachers as well.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.