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.