Exploring the engagement effects of visual programming language for data structure courses

Previous research indicates that understanding the state of learning motivation enables researchers to deeply understand students’ learning processes. Studies have shown that visual programming languages use graphical code, enabling learners to learn effectively, improve learning effectiveness, increase learning fun, and offering various other advantages. This study is a counterbalanced experiment on the students of a class, conducted in three stages. The first stage examines the students’ initial motivation states. In the second stage, students use a traditional programming language before a visual programming language to learn a specific data structure topic. Finally, in the third stage, students use a visual programming language before a traditional programming language to learn another specific data structure topic. After collecting the experimental data, we cross analyzed questionnaire results to observe whether there was any correlation between them. We found that the motivation state at stages two and three were significantly higher than at stage one. It can be deduced that the use of a visual programming language in a data structure course has a significant effect on improving learning motivation.