UNAIR NEWS – Programming courses are considered as challenging subjects for both lecturers and students. Students still believe that programming courses are the most difficult subjects to understand.
According to Nasa Zata Dina, S.Kom., M.Kom., M.Sc, students need more time to understand the logic and programming algorithms. One of the reasons students have difficulty understanding is because they were not introduced to the concept of programming early on.
“We conducted research on 110 students and found that visual learning media had a more significant influence in improving student scores than traditional learning methods,” explained the lecturer of Information System program Faculty of Vocational Studies (FV) UNAIR.
In the research, Nasa and the team gave ten questions to be answered by students. The contents of the questions aim to compare the effect of using Alice & Greenfoot educational software in the traditional programming method.
Alice & Greenfoot itself is a visual learning media to support programming learning. Alice & Greenfoot introduces the concept of programming through animation and games.
The analysis showed that on average 70% of students understood the concept of programming well after using Alice and Greenfoot. The main concepts of programming such as looping, if-else, can be well understood by students using these methods.
“From the results of the analysis, there is a significant correlation between the level of student satisfaction with student grades at the end of the semester after using the method,” she said.
So it can be concluded that visual learning media can help students enjoy programming courses than traditional methods. Furthermore, the level of student satisfaction significantly influences the achievement of student competencies as evidenced by the increasing student scores after Alice and Greenfoot were involved in the learning process.
Author: Galuh Mega Kurnia
Editor: Khefti Al Mawalia
Reference:
Dina, N. Z., Wuryanto, E. & Marjianto, R. S., 2019. Evaluation on the Effectiveness of Visual Learning Environment on Programming Course From Students’ Perspectives. Electrical, Computer and Communications Engineering, 20(1), pp. 100-107.
