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Iconic programming proves effective for teaching the first year programming sequence

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Published:01 March 1997Publication History
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Abstract

Research has been undertaken to answer the following question: Can icon-based programming languages be used to teach first year programming concepts to undergraduate students more effectively than text-based languages? BACCII++ is an iconic environment developed at Texas Tech University for teaching procedural and object-oriented programming concepts and languages. Course materials were developed and used under experimental conditions during the 1995-96 school year at Texas Tech University, with half using BACCII++ to generate C++ code, and the other half using only C++. For each course in each semester the experiment was run, the sections using BACCII++ did significantly better in overall performance.

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          cover image ACM SIGCSE Bulletin
          ACM SIGCSE Bulletin  Volume 29, Issue 1
          March 1997
          388 pages
          ISSN:0097-8418
          DOI:10.1145/268085
          Issue’s Table of Contents
          • cover image ACM Conferences
            SIGCSE '97: Proceedings of the twenty-eighth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
            March 1997
            410 pages
            ISBN:0897918894
            DOI:10.1145/268084

          Copyright © 1997 ACM

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          • Published: 1 March 1997

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