Information types and cognitive principles in program comprehension: Towards adaptable support for novice visual programmers

Abstract

The authors describe work on the GRiP (Graphical Representations in Programming) Project, which aims to build a support environment for novices learning to program using a visual programming language (VPL). The design of the environment is based on a series of experiments which investigate issues of visual programming language paradigm, and the ways in which novices extract information from a representation in order to make sense of a program. This paper focuses particularly on the multivariate nature of program comprehension, the difficulties associated with attempting to teach skills of this kind, and suggests a solution in the form of a modular support system.