Reflections on Using Robots and Visual Programming Environments for Project-Based Teaching

Abstract

Visual programming languages provide a more natural approach to specifying software/hardware systems with complex behaviour such as robots. They are especially important in education because they do not require formal knowledge of programming language syntax and are attractive to users. We present an analysis and comparison of two visual programming environments, Lego NXT-G and Microsoft Visual Programming Language, based on the cognitive and usability requirements, evaluate their application in robotics-based Computer Science education, identify main problems and propose solutions for using visual programming languages in the Internet-of-Things domain. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eee.20.1.6169