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. Copyright 2005 ACM.