A Web based Approach for Teaching and Learning Programming Concepts at Middle School Level

Abstract

One of the major concerns in teaching and learning programming concepts is the complexity of syntax and precision of semantics of programming languages. Traditional teaching methods are static and passive i.e. they do not engage students in an interactive manner thereby making it difficult for students to grasp the contents and instructors to convey the instruction. This obstacle even becomes challenging when programming courses are to be taught to beginners. To cope up with this challenge, this work has proposed and prototyped a system that is aimed to focus on students at their middle level of education. Multimedia technology i.e. videos have been used to plunge the students in an interactive environment where learning JavaScript programming becomes fun instead of a mind-burden. Visualization concepts have been incorporated to provide visual learning for variables, loops, control structures, functions etc. This application is dynamic in nature that is user can not only understand the programming concepts but can also run the codes using code panel. The designed system has been tested to ensure the functionality, performance and feedback from the targeted users as discussed in results section.