Learning and comprehension of BASIC and natural language computer programming by novices
This study examined the effectiveness of teaching novices to program in Natural Language as a prerequisite for learning BASIC, and the learning and comprehension processes for Natural Language and BASIC computer-programming languages. Three groups of computer-naive subjects participated in five self-paced learning sessions; in each sessions, subjects solved a series of programming problems with immediate feedback. Twenty-four subjects learned to solve BASIC programming problems (BASIC group) for all five sessions, 23 subjects learned to solve corresponding Natural Language programming problems for all five sessions (Natural Language group), and 23 subjects learned to solve Natural Language programming problems for three sessions and then transferred to BASIC for the two sessions (Transfer group). At the end of the fifth session, all subjects completed a post-test which required the subjects to use their programming knowledge in a new way. Results indicated that the Natural Language trained subjects had complete transfer to BASIC, as indicated by no overall difference in comprehension time or accuracy for final BASIC sessions (i.e., sessions four and five) for the Transfer and BASIC groups. In addition, there was an interaction between group and session on accuracy, in which the Transfer group increased its accuracy at a faster rate than the BASIC group.
- Research Organization:
- California Univ., Santa Barbara (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 6917665
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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