The purpose of this study was to teach the basic programming concept clearly and to improve the educational performance of vocational high school students, particularly in terms of understanding and gaining the ability to apply Visual Basic, which is ...
The purpose of this study was to teach the basic programming concept clearly and to improve the educational performance of vocational high school students, particularly in terms of understanding and gaining the ability to apply Visual Basic, which is requiredin the field after they graduate. This was done by using the EPL Scratch in teaching the basic programming concept instead of the current programming education, which mostly involves only usage. A high degree of understanding of the basic concept of programming using Scratch can boost a student’s educational performance particularly in terms of understanding Visual Basic. In this study, Scratch was introduced to address the limitations of the current programming education and to supplement the teaching of programming in school.
Scratch, an educational programming language with a coding method that is easy enough for use by students and that can thus develop the students’ interest in studying the basic programming concept, was chosen as an educational tool for teaching the basic programming concept. Curricula of the four-class volume of common components and the six-class volume of Visual-Basic-related contents were developed based on the current study contents for teaching the basic programming concept. Of the selected two classes in a vocational high school, one was taught the basic programming concept using Scratchand the other was taught the concept using the conventional method. As a result, the group that was taught using Scratch showed a higher educational performance compared to the other group in terms of understanding the basic programming concept as well as Visual Basic. It can thus be concluded that teaching the basic programming concept using Scratch can boost the students’ educational performance in terms of understanding both the basic programming concept and Visual Basic.
It is hoped that the results of this study will serve as a basis for the improvement of programming education and will develop the students’ interest in studying the educational programming language.