The Effect of Students' Educational Background and Use of a Program Visualization Tool in Introductory Programming
Marthie A. Schoeman, Heléne Gelderblom · 2016
Introductory programming modules frequently have a low pass rate. This paper reports on an attempt to address this issue by introducing an interactive program visualization tutorial in the course material for an introductory programming module at the University of South-Africa (Unisa). The tutorial aimed to assist first-year programming students in an open, distance and e-learning (ODeL) environment in learning how to trace programs. To investigate the impact thereof students completed a questionnaire on their use of the tutorial, which were analysed in combination with their final marks for the module. This was repeated over two semesters.