A Constructivist Instructional Design Introducing visual programming to professional designers A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design in the Myron E. Ullman Jr. School of Design College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning by [Xinyu Qiu] Previous Degree and Institution Committee Chair [Seward, Renee] 3/10/20 iv ABSTRACT A proliferation of introductory visual programming language raises the question of how to introduce VPLs to more creators and how to improve the usability and learnability of the VPL platform. This paper compares two different teaching methods and visual programming paradigm software to observe the influence of different factors on the use of visual programming software by adult learners in the designer group. A more constructive teaching style using gamification between participants and a more behaviorist teaching style using small lecture and interaction were exposed to participants in different instruction group. Different visual programming platforms were also tested in each group. User experience scores based on performance score and self-reported scores were collected during and after participants operating on the visual programming software. The independent-sample t-tests were used to answer the research question that: is there a mean difference in scores for v operating and self-rating between different instruction groups and different visual programming platform. The test result shows that there is a mean difference in the efficiency (performance score) between the behaviorist instruction approach and the constructivism instruction approach for using visual programming software. The performing scores in the constructive teaching group are statistically significantly higher than the performing scores in the behaviorist teaching group. In addition, designers who exposed to the imperative visual programming software also perform better than those exposed to declarative visual programming software. The study of constructive education in teaching visual programming language worth further exploration, in fact, under the trend of digital learning, constructive learning mechanism and the auxiliary of visual programming, a combination of both to learn programming, especially for programming beginners’ introductory courses, has a positive effect. vi vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT v TABLE OF CONTENTS viii LIST OF TABLES x LIST OF FIGURES xi GLOSSARY, LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS xii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2 2.1 Opportunity 2 2.1.1 Proliferation of VPLs 4 2.2 What is VPLs 4 2.2.1 Block-based VPLs 5 2.2.2 Node-based VPLs 8 2.3 Brief summary 11 CHAPTER 3. INSTRUTIONAL DESIGN 12 3.1 Behaviorist instructional design 14 3.2 Constructivist instructional design 16 3.3 Instructional design in experiment 18 CHAPTER 4. THE EXPERIMENT DESIGN 19 4.1 The dependent variables 20 4.1.1 Completion rate 21 4.1.2 Time-on-task 21 4.1.3 Efficiency 22 4.2 The independent variables 22 4.2.1 S4A and XOD 23 4.2.2 Behaviorist and Constructivist 23 viii 4.3 The experiment process 24 CHAPTER 5. RESULTS 26 5.1 Efficiency of instructional groups 26 5.2 Efficiency of software groups 30 5.3 Overall-score of software groups 34 CHAPTER 6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 38 REFERENCES 41 APPENDIX A 45 APPENDIX B 46 APPENDIX C 48 APPENDIX D 53 APPENDIX E 60 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Characteristics of two kinds of instructional design 13 Table 2 Instructional groups statistics for efficiency 28 Table 3 Independent samples test for efficiency in instructional groups 28 Table 4 Software groups statistics for efficiency 32 Table 5 Independent samples test for efficiency in software groups 32 Table 6 Software group statistics for overall score 36 Table 7 Independent samples test for overall score in software groups 36 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Dependent variable measured 20 Figure 2 Observed efficiency scores in 2 instructional groups 28 Figure 3 Observed efficiency score in 2 software groups 32 Figure 4 Observed overall score in 2 software groups 36 xi GLOSSARY, LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS xii xiii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION The rapid development of information technology has accelerated the pace of innovation while creating new job markets. Visual programming languages (VPLs) has played a major role in the development of low-code platforms that allow ideas to be quickly turned into prototypes. How to introduce VPLs to more creators and how to improve the usability and learnability of low code platforms based on VPLs are the themes of this study. This study compares the use of block-based imperative VPL and node-based declarative VPL, representative low-code programs among designers. XOD and S4A will be used as representative respectively. The study also focuses on the influence of different teaching methods on learning visual programming. Behaviorist instructional design and constructivist instructional design are the main categories in the test. 1 CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW Willis (1995) compares the differences between traditional behaviorist principles and constructivist principles in the field of teaching. behaviorism emphasizes the order of knowledge transmission, while constructivism focuses on the nonlinear and recursive transmission. Both methods are also widely used in programming education, the research on the practical effect of two teaching methods in visual programming education is also included in this paper. 2.1 Opportunity According to the CompTIA IT industry outlook (2019), the global information technology industry is on its pace to reach $5 trillion in 2019, it has been keeping a growth rate of 4% for 5 years since 2015. There have been many labels for the most recent waves of technology that are redefining business and society, and one of these labels is the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” The effect of the fourth industrial revolution is never 2 elusive but realistic, millions of jobs will be created or destroyed by technological change over the next decade. “Trend in today’s labor market is how technology is mutating jobs into new, unexpected hybrid jobs” (JosephE.Aoun, 2010). Combining skill sets are always found in the same job, such as marketing, statistical or design and programming. In those skills, programming has been found to be the most important skill in the future (Lydia Dishman, 2016). The skills were defined as using a computer program to write instructions to a computer as opposed to using established applications. For example, Programming languages including JavaScript and HTML for building websites, statistical programs R and SAS, AutoCAD programs for engineers, and other all-purpose programming languages such as Java, Python, and C++. 3 2.1.1 A proliferation of VPLs As more and more people realize that it becomes important for non- programming-skill practitioners to develop programming skills to take part in the increasingly digital world in the future job market, a proliferation of introductory programming environments designed for novice learners across all age has been observed in these years, also known as the visual programming language. 2.2 What is VPLs Visual programming language means language for programming with graphical expression. (Chang, S.-K., 1986) A visual programming environment is one that allows the programmer to create programs by manipulating graphical elements rather than typing textual commands. A well-known example is Scratch, a visual programming language from MIT 4 that’s used to teach children. The advantages given are that they make programming more accessible to novices and non-programmers. Among the many visual programming software for non-programmers or enthusiasts, two popular programming paradigms are widely accepted. One is imperative visual programming such as scratch, and the other is declarative visual programming such as XOD. Imperative programming is a programming paradigm that uses statements that change a program’s state, while Declarative programming is a programming paradigm that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow (Ian Mundy, 2017). Both of these paradigms are widely used in the programming world, and their application in visual programming is one of the main topics explored in this study. 2.2.1 Block-based VPLs Early versions of the block-based programming interfaces include Logo Blocks (Begel, 1996) and Bridge Talk (Bonar and Liffick, 1987). In 5 addition to being used in more conventional computer science contexts, a growing number of environments have adopted the block-based programming approach to lower the barrier to programming across a variety of domains. These include mobile app development with MIT App Inventor (Wolber, 2014) and Pocket Code (Slany, 2014); modeling and simulation tools including Star Logo TNG (Begel and Klopfer, 2007), Delta Tick (Wilkerson-Jerde and Wilensky, 2010), Net Tango (Horn and Wilensky, 2012), and Evo Build (Wagh and Wilensky, 2018); creative and artistic tools like Turtle Art (Bontá, 2010) and Pico Blocks (The Playful Invention Company 2008); and game-based learning environments like Robo Builder (Weintrop and Wilensky, 2012), Lightbot (Yaroslavski, 2014), and Google’s Made with Code initiative. led by the popularity of Scratch (Resnick et al. 2009), Snap! (Harvey and Mönig, 2010), and Blockly (Fraser, 2015), their block-based programming environment have proliferated in k-12 STEM education classes. Block-based programming environments