Tool Support for Learning Computer and Robot Programming

Computer Programming is believed to have effect on creativity, reasoning, analytic and mathematical skills. This cognitive development is at a cost from both ends of students and teachers of computer programming. Its abstractive nature makes it difficult to teach and learn hence, the enormous hours spent in teaching, learning and developing solutions. Consequently, the less interest among the students at all levels of education. Studies have shown various attempts to ease its teaching and learning by developing user friendly interfaces and use of course video teaching clips from seasoned programmers. However, learning and teaching programming skills remains a herculean task for student and teachers respectively. It is believed that interacting with a more tangible object can improve students' interest in developing computer programming skills. A mobile robot- a situated and embodied electronic device serves this purpose hence, the use of the device that students have more interest in interacting with in this study. In this work, an interactive program evaluation framework was developed that interact with a simulated e-puck robot on V-Rep simulator platform. The study shows an increased interest and improved performance in computer programming among Computer Science students.