The Effect of BASIC Programming Language Instruction on High School Students’ Problem Solving Ability and Computer Anxiety

Effects of Pascal and FORTRAN Programming on the Problem-Solving Abilities of College Students

“…These findings agree with the previous results of Palumbo and Reed ( 1990). Although the correlation statistics for both the Pascal and FORTRAN programming groups appear to be statistically strong, the correlation between Journal of Research on Computing in Education the posttest scores and the programming performance for the Pascal programming group (r = .644,p = .004) is higher than the correlation between them for the FORTRAN programming group ( r = .584 p = .011 ).…”

“…This instrument, as adapted by Reed and Palumbo (1987 /88), has been found :o be related to some of the kinds of problem-solving activities specifically involved in learning a programming language (Reed, Palumbo, & Stolar, 1987 /88;Palumbo, 1990b;Palumbo & Reed, 1990).…”

“…Palumbo and Reed (1987/88) have used the term "intensity of treatment" to describe the treatment provided in problem-solving/programming language research. According to Palumbo and Reed (1990), intensity of treatment is a function of three main components: (a) the amount of actual time spent working on the computer, (b) the rigor of the information presented in the compu:er learning atmosph®, and (c) the proximity of instructional sessions to each other. (p. 11) There are several languages available for teaching programming to students at the high school or college level, including LOGO, BASIC, Pascal, FOR-TRAN, COBOL, C, PROLOG, LISP, and so on.…”

The effect of learning problem-solving methods on learning to program in the BASIC language

“…It is hypothesized in this study that learning problem-solving skills leads to a significant improvement in cognitive skills and has a direct positive relationship with learning the BASIC computer programming language. Palumbo and Reed (1991; found that, in a structured BASIC programming environment, students did not show a significant increase in four measures of problem-solving ability (i.e.,) after 45 hours of programming experience. After 90 hours of programming experience, there were significant increases in the students' problem-solving scores.…”

“…Bayman and Mayer (1988) reported learning BASIC programming involves the growth of syntactic and conceptual knowledge and that strategic knowledge and problem solving performance are strongly related to measures of conceptual knowledge. Palumbo and Reed (1991) showed that some problem-solving skills of high school students can be increased through systematic exposure and interaction with the BASIC programming language. The current study examined the effect of learning problem solving prior to learning to program in the BASIC language.…”