Effect of Program Visualization to Teach Computer Programming in a Resource Constrained Classroom

Acquisition of programming concepts and skills is a key goal of computer science and engineering curricula. It has been shown that students find programming to be a difficult and complex cognitive task. Program visualizations have been shown to improve students´ understanding, but most studies have been conducted in resource equipped classrooms, for example, in which students have personalized access to laptops. In this paper, we report findings from a two-group experimental study (N=60) in a resource constrained classroom with a single computer and mounted LCD. One group was taught with an interactive program visualization tool and the other with traditional chalk and blackboard approach. Analysis showed a statistically significant higher performance on a post-test for the program visualization group compared to the traditional group. This difference was seen regardless of students´ visual/verbal learning style, leading to the conclusion that use of program visualization in large resource constrained classroom is an effective strategy to teach computer programming.