Abstract:

Methodology for Programming is an important aspect of education for students in the IT field. Junior students must start programming and their capabilities to assimilate the concepts to be applied are usually opposite to their possibilities if focused on learning syntax of a specific language under pressure.

PSeInt is a tool to assist students in their first steps in programming. Through a simple and intuitive pseudo-language in Spanish, as well as a flowchart editor, PSeInt allows teachers to focus their attention on teaching the fundamental concepts of computational algorithms, minimizing the difficulties of a programming language first immersion.

After some years teaching Programming with Java, the authors decided to introduce the use of PSeInt and measured how the performance of students improved if compared to the previous years’ courses. The results are very interesting and allow the authors to explicitly define two scenarios for learning which main differences are based on the use or not of PSeInt.

The authors describe their experience, present the main features of the experiment using PSeInt, explain the data of students’ performance before and after introducing this tool, and compare the two scenarios highlighting what seem to be the key factors affecting performance.

Keywords:

PSeInt, Methodology for Programming, Programming, Teaching Programming.