Work in progress — Using a visual programming language to bridge the cognitive gap between a novice´s mental model and program code

Current research suggests that many students do not know how to program at the conclusion of their introductory course, which has been taught predominately with textual and auditory lecturing. By primarily appealing to programming novices who prefer to understand visually, an understanding method not currently accommodated through the standard lecture style used in most classes, we develop a method that encourages communication of programming solutions. This method builds upon previous research that suggests that most engineering students are visual learners and we contribute that using a flow-model visual programming language will address important and difficult topics to novices of programming. We performed a pilot study using a knowledge modeling tool instead of using an existing visual programming tool to test this method, and share the program understanding results using this theory.