This work investigates the effectiveness of simulated robots as tools to support the learning of programming. After the completion of a systematic review and exploratory research, a multi-case case study was undertaken. A simulator, named Kebot, was developed and used to run four 10-hour programming workshops. Twenty-three student participants…

Computer science proficiency continues to grow in importance, while the number of students entering computer science-related fields declines. Many rich programming environments have been created to motivate student interest and expertise in computer science. In the current study, we investigated whether a recently created environment, Robot…

Visual program simulation (VPS) is a new, interactive form of educational program visualisation, in which learners use graphical controls to direct a program's execution rather than simply watching an animation of it. In this article, we report on a qualitative empirical study of novice programmers learning through VPS. From an analysis of…