Strategy for learning microcontroller programming—a graphical or a textual start?

Microcontroller programming competencies contribute to the sustainable employability of engineering graduates of both higher and secondary education. To develop the required programming skills, one of the challenges for educators is to determine which programming environments should be implemented in introductory programming courses. Conceptually, graphical (e.g. iconic or diagrammatic) environments appear to be very different from textual environments. Our study focused on a programming course in a mechatronics vocational training programme at the secondary school level in Slovenia. To investigate the expectations of potential employers towards our graduates, we surveyed local companies. Out of 104 respondents, 90 (86.5%) expected graduates to be able to use various programming environments, including upcoming ones. In our study, we divided 114 students into two groups of equal prior knowledge. Group A started the course with a textual programming environment and switched to a graphical one in the second sequence, while group B followed a reverse sequence. Group A achieved better test results after both sequences. Knowledge transfer, as measured by normalised learning gains, was also in favour of group A. We concluded that it is more efficient to start with the textual environment and then continue with the graphical environment. The results of this study open up some challenges for further research to investigate the effectiveness of introductory programming courses based on programmable electronics with students of similar ages. Further research should consider the specific requirements of the different courses but should also the effectiveness of knowledge transfer between different programming environments.