Using an iconic design tool to teach the object-oriented paradigm

Summary form only given. Research was undertaken to answer the following question: can icon-based programming languages be used to teach procedural and object-oriented programming concepts to undergraduate students more effectively than text-based languages? An experiment addressing this question was run using the new teaching materials at Texas Tech, USA. Half of the students used BACCII++ to design C++ in their assignments; the other half used only C++. For the object-oriented course, statistically significant differences were found favoring BACCII++ on programs, exams (which did not use BACCII++) and overall course average. This research has widespread potential significance: if iconic languages perform significantly better than text-based languages in the learning of programming skills for a wide variety of schools and student groups, it could revolutionize how software development skills are taught in every computer-related program in secondary and higher education