Abstract—Teaching computer programming is recognized to
be difficult and a real challenge. The biggest problem faced by
novice programmers is their lack of understanding of basic
programming concepts. A visualized learning tool was
developed and used by volunteered first-year students for two
semesters. The purposes of this paper are: Firstly, to emphasize
factors which directly affect the performance of our students
negatively. Secondly, to examine whether the proposed tool
would improve their performance and learning progression or
not. This tool provides many features and enhancement which
were presented to students as pre-lecture material. The results
of adopting this tool were conducted using a pre-survey and
post-survey questionnaire. As a result, students who used the
learning tool showed better performance in their programming
subject.
Index Terms—Factors, novice, programming, visualization.
Hala Shaari is with the Department of Software Engineering, Faculty of
Information Technologies, University of Tripoli, Libya (e-mail:
h.shaari@uot.edu.ly).
Nuredin Ahmed is with the Department of Computer Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, Azzaytuna University, Libya (e-mail:
nuredin@mtit.com.ly).
Cite: Hala Shaari and Nuredin Ahmed, "Improving Performance and Progression of Novice Programmers: Factors Considerations," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 7-10, 2018.