Improvement of Programming Education

－ The Effect of Applying Visual Basic in Introductory Classes －

Abstract

In programming education, there are many cases in which remarkable individual differences in achievement appear in a class. Many students who fail in the introductory stage of the programming language, and they tend to use the programming language poorly afterwards. We analyzed those causes over several years, and devised some improvements. There were some synchronization of achievement with the relating subjects and other problems with programming education, and we had to carry out further improvement. Staff of the programming including the author changed the language used in the introduction from C language to Visual Basic, and the programming education was improved. As the result, remarkable effects appeared in third year foreign students who learn programming language. It was foreseen that it would be similarly effective in the first year students. This method of improvement and its usefulness are reported in this paper.