VISUAL VS. TEXTUAL PROGRAMMING: A CASE STUDY ON MOBILE APPLICATION PROGRAMMING BY TEENAGERS

In education, we have noticed a significant gap between the ability of students to program in an educational visual programming environment and the ability to write code in a professional programming environment. The aim of our research was to verify the methodology of transition from visual programming of mobile applications in MIT App Inventor 2 to textual programming in the Android Studio using the Java Bridge tool as a mediator of knowledge transfer. We have examined the extent, to which students will be able to independently program own mobile applications after completing the transition from visual to textual programming using the mediator. To evaluate the performance of students, we have analysed qualitative data from teaching during 1 school year and determined the degree of achievement of educational goals according to Bloom’s taxonomy. The results suggest that students in the secondary education can acquire advanced skills in programming mobile applications in a professional programming environment, when they have knowledge of visual programming in an educational programming environment, and a suitable mediator is used to transfer such knowledge into a new context.

Service-oriented computing and service-level orchestration through visual or graphical programming have been widely used in software and particularly in Web application development. Their further developments and fusing into Internet of Things, Robot as a Service (RaaS), cloud computing, and big data analysis have created the infrastructure for the information technologies to penetrate into all sectors of industry, service, and society. Figure 1 shows the stack of the related concepts, technologies, and applications. IoT service orchestration and visual programming separates the high-level composition from the low-level device programming, which allows the application builders to focus on the business logic, while the service providers to focus on efficient service development. This presentation will discuss the current service orchestration and visual programming environments for IoT application development. The presentation centralizes the topics around IoT. It starts with the upper layer of IoT, including service-oriented computing, Web software development, and service orchestration for system integration, which forms the foundation of cloud computing and a major data source of big data analysis. On the other hand, IoT standards and protocols are presented, which connect the service orchestration infrastructure tohardware and devices. As IoT applications and implementations, ADS (Autonomous Decentralized Systems), DPWS (Device Profile for Web Services), and Robot as a Service will be discussed. Different orchestration environments that have been widely used in industry and academic world will be presented, including BPEL in Oracle SOA Suite, Microsoft Workflow Foundation, Intel IoT Service Orchestration Layer, Microsoft Robotics Development Studio, MIT App Inventor, CMU Alice visual game programming environment, and ASU VIPLE (Visual IoT/Robotics Programming Environment). As a case study, VIPLE will be presented in more detail. VIPLE is a free software with open source IoT middleware developed at Arizona State University. VIPLE orchestration environment has an open interface to IoT devices. Any IoT device that can be programmed to interpret JSON objects and wrap sensory data into JSON objects can interface with VIPLE and be programmed using VIPLE orchestration environment. A demonstration will be given to show how an IoT application can be developed in minutes to control Intel Edison IoT device. VIPLE software, including orchestration environment, IoT middleware, full document, and lecture slides can be downloaded at: http://venus.eas.asu.edu/WSRepository/VIPLE.

Many Integrated Development Environment (IDE) can be used to create Android Apps. Android Studio with Java programming language is an IDE and native programming language that is officially supported by Google. As a supported IDE, AS becomes the best IDE that can be used to build apps. Nevertheless, many novice programmers find it difficult to get started especially by starting a new programming concept for mobile devices. Android Studio is also known as an IDE that requires a high specs computer requirement and also has sophisticated features. This research purposed to develop applications with IDEs that are more user-friendly and more emphasize the big concept of programming without much difficulty regarding compiling the program code and also the complexity of IDE as well as Android Studio. The IDE used in this study is App Inventor 2 (AI2), a cloud-based IDE managed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The next goal is to test the capabilities of the application by conducting Blackbox Testing and User Testing. In this research has been developed an app called Receptionist that is used to test the ability of the codes generated by AI2. The results show that AI2 can be used to build complex applications such as Text Message Service (SMS) broadcasting, performing local database queries and retrieving data on the server. However, some features such as database processing should run in the background still run on the UI thread, thereby reducing the user experience when Application Not Responding (ANR) occurs. Keywords: App Inventor 2, Android Application, Cloud Programming, visual programming

The process of learning a programming language is seen as complicated, especially for those who first start to learn programming language. For this reason, visual programming tools have begun to be used in educational environments. Visual programming tools purpose to concretize abstract programming language concepts. Alice program is one of the visual programming tools. The aim of this study is to determine the effects of the Alice program on programming learning in the education environment. The study group was 18 freshman students enrolled in the Object Based Programming I course at the vocational school computer technology department. The study lasted 8 weeks, with 4 hours each week. The teaching was realized on Gagne’s nine events of instruction model. At the end of the teaching process, two focus group interviews were conducted with the students to determine the obstructing and facilitating factors in using the Alice program. This study was utilized a descriptive case study. The data were analyzed by using the content analysis. When the results were examined; It was seen that the Alice program makes learning the basic code concepts easy and understanding programming logic, and increases the desire to learn programming. However, it was stated that the practicality of writing code could not be improved because code could not be written in the Alice program. It is thought that employing the Alice program is beneficial for enhancing comprehension of programming logic.

In recent years teaching methods and tools have changed due to the development of IT information technologies. The Teaching Learning Process is guided and supported by the use of technological and pedagogical drivers in a holistic way.
 This paper presents a teaching framework for the development of technologically supported learning environments, through the utilization of visual programming tools, such as Kodu and Scratch, proposed by the current and supplementary National Curriculum. Also, it proposes a framework of educational scenarios as a part of Games Based Learning practices within a Project Based Learning project that will be implemented during languages courses to K-6 students.
 Seventy-five Greek-speaking children of the fifth year of various primary schools of Athens participated in this study. The aim of the study was not only to examine how the creation of educational digital games with Kodu and Scratch can introduce primary school students to programming but also to investigate the developmental path of 21st century skills such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication (4Cs) and virtual/digital skills. A mixed method approach was adopted to explore the educational value of using these programming tools in the teaching-learning process. The research data was collected using observations, worksheets and questionnaires. The result of this study shows that the students were excited about the creation of their game by visual programming environments and project implementation, which was reflected by their active involvement in the learning process.
 The positive results of the research suggest that, in the proposed framework, the visual programming environments Kodu and Scratch can be dynamic learning tools during the teaching of language courses that support the development of students’ expression and collaboration skills. Also, the above findings provide an approach for future teaching to K-6 students on developing narrative skills.

In recent years, several visual programming languages and tools are emerging, which allow young students to easily program applications. Particularly, the block-based language used by Scratch has been the standard in most school initiatives to introduce Computational thinking (CT) in courses unrelated to computing. However, CT competences are not specifically included in the curricula of many Higher Education degrees that future teachers of Primary and Secondary Education have to complete. This paper describes a workshop for teachers' training on CT. It is based on the block-based common language of Scratch, but focused on enhancing teachers' skills to develop mobile applications with a tool based on the MIT's AppInventor. This workshop provided some insights on the capabilities of future teachers in the use of programming tools1.

Shows how visual programming can be used to teach the subject of binary tree algorithms. In our approach, the student implements a binary tree algorithm by manipulating abstract tree fragments (not necessarily just single nodes) in a visual way. This paper contributes to visual programming research by combining elements of animation, programming and proof to produce an educational visual programming tool. In addition, we describe our experiences with Opsis, a system we built to demonstrate the ideas in this paper (Opsis is a Java applet and can be accessed at http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/amir/Opsis.html). Finally, we make the claim that visual programming is an ideal way to teach data structure algorithms.

Block-based visual programming tools, such as Scratch, Alice, and MIT App Inventor, provide an intuitive and easy-to-use editing interface through which to promote programming learning for novice students of various ages. However, very little attention has been paid to investigating these tools’ overall effects on students’ academic achievement and the study features that may moderate the effects of block-based visual programming from a comprehensive perspective. Thus, the present study carried out a meta-analysis to systemically examine 29 empirical studies (extracting 34 effect sizes) using experimental or quasi-experiments involving the programming learning effects of employing block-based visual programming tools to date (until the end of 2019). The results showed a small to medium significant positive overall mean effect size (fixed-effect model g = 0.37; random-effects model g = 0.47) of the use of these block-based visual programming tools with respect to students’ academic achievement. Furthermore, the overall mean effect size was significantly affected by the educational stage, programming tool used, experimental treatment, and school location. Discussions and implications based on the findings are provided.

BIM tools also allow to conduct various impact analysis and, with regard to the growing concern about environmental issues, they embody a valuable mean to analyse buildings process consequences thus guiding designers towards better and more aware choices.The capacity of BIM applications to evaluate environmental issues would be enhanced if integrated with Life- Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools considered among the most suitable methods for evaluating such impacts. However, a typical barrier in performing LCA during the early design stages, i.e. the moment that influence the most the project outputs, is the lack of project information. Usually, this implies LCA to be performed after the design phase, when all the significant decisions are already taken.The implementation of LCA within the early stages of the design process, possibly through an automated method, can enhance the control of environmental variables hence, the integration of BIM and LCA, appears to be a suitable opportunity.The parametric approach allows BIM-based software to collect data and connect them with model elements. In order to avoid manual compilation of complex records, Visual Programming tools can cooperate with the authoring BIM software and interrelate the model with external sources such as materials environmental impact databases. Moreover, they can be configured to perform complex LCA calculation and automatically update the outcomes when something in the model changes. The goal of this paper is to propose a sample workflow applied to a case study, in order to provide AEC stakeholders with a simplified BIM-based method for easily detecting the potential consequence of undertaking certain design choices at initial project stages or, at least, at those phases when definitive materials and products selection occurs.

BackgroundCustom orthoses are becoming more commonly prescribed for upper and lower limbs. They require some form of shape-capture of the body parts they will be in contact with, which generates an STL file that designers prepare for manufacturing. For larger devices such as custom-contoured wheelchair cushions, the STL created during shape-capture can contain hundreds of thousands of tessellations, making them difficult to alter and prepare for manufacturing using mesh-editing software. This study covers the development and testing of a mesh-to-surface workflow in a parametric computer-aided design software using its visual programming language such that STL files of custom wheelchair cushions can be efficiently converted into a parametric single surface.MethodsA volunteer in the clinical space with expertise in computer-aided design aided was interviewed to understand and document the current workflow for creating a single surface from an STL file of a custom wheelchair cushion. To understand the user needs of typical clinical workers with little computer-aided design experience, potential end-users of the process were tasked with completing the workflow and providing feedback during the experience. This feedback was used to automate part of the computer-aided design process using a visual programming tool, creating a new semi-automated workflow for mesh-to-surface translation. Both the original and semi-automated process were then evaluated by nine volunteers with varying levels of computer-aided design experience.ResultsThe semi-automated process showed a 37% reduction in the total number of steps required to convert an STL model to a parametric surface. Regardless of previous computer-aided design experience, volunteers completed the semi-automated workflow 31% faster on average than the manual workflow.ConclusionsThe creation of a semi-automated process for creating a single parametric surface of a custom wheelchair cushion from an STL mesh makes mesh-to-surface conversion more efficient and more user-friendly to all, regardless of computer-aided design experience levels. The steps followed in this study may guide others in the development of their own mesh-to-surface tools in the wheelchair sector, as well as those creating other large custom prosthetic devices.

Active development of optoelectronic systems for unmanned aerial systems has led to both a significant increase in aerial reconnaissance data sets and requirements for the processing of these data sets. Main requirements are the following: ensuring the necessary level of efficiency in processing the ever-growing volumes of aerial reconnaissance data; the need to classify digital images depending on the interests of the aerial reconnaissance system (air reconnaissance area; aerial reconnaissance objects localized on digital aerial photographs); the need to automate individual processes of processing intelligence information in order to reduce the negative impact of the human factor on the decoding process; the need for personnel processing intelligence information to have the necessary skills in using modern tools for intelligent data analysis. A model for classifying digital images generated by on-board optoelectronic systems of unmanned aerial vehicles is being developed in order to automate individual stages of aerial reconnaissance data processing. The essence of the proposed approach is to utilize visual programming modules (blocks) from the “No-Code” platform type “Orange Data Mining” to create a model for classifying digital image arrays in support of aerial reconnaissance. The use of the proposed model allows: to reduce the requirements for the professional skills of personnel processing aerial reconnaissance data through visual programming tools; to provide the possibility of local use (using the UAV command and control station) for processing reconnaissance information; to create conditions for forming data sets for their further annotation and formation of computer vision models in the interests of the aerial reconnaissance system. Further scientific research will be aimed at the integration of the proposed approach to classifying digital images into the preparation of a dataset for developing a model for the automated detection and tracking of aerial reconnaissance objects.

The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for Building Energy Simulation (BES) is challenged by inadequate data integration and unreliable data and geometry conversion. Despite recent efforts to address critical interoperability issues, the effective exchange of data between the two digital environments remains a non-truly fulfilled promise of the digital transformation agenda for the industry. To contribute to the broader community effort in mitigating this deficiency, the present article proposes an alternative method for securing an improved BIM to BES workflow for existing and heritage buildings. The proposed method suggests an alternative way for integrating environmental analysis data to the Heritage BIM model, as well as an easy to develop visual programming process for missing data recovery, through auxiliary exchange operations. The article also presents lessons learned for the geometrical conversion of BIM elements with non-standard and irregular attributes, evaluated through the energy retrofit application of a colonial heritage building. The proposed method demonstrates how visual programming tools and common data exchange formats can supplementary assist existing practises to deal with major interoperability obstacles. The overall findings contribute to current efforts in the field, for the establishment of good practices of using Heritage BIM for energy retrofit architectural interventions.

The important features of several software packages for communication system simulation are discussed. Whereas initial versions of SYSTID and similar packages are language-oriented and designed to operate in a batch mode, such packages as ICS, ICSSM, etc. are interactive and menu driven. The packages developed in recent years (BOSS, MODEM, LabVIEW, etc.) involve powerful workstation and personal computers with friendly computing environments and highly visual and graphical user interfaces. A number of issues arise when simulation is selected as a design or analysis tool. Important considerations are the simulation environment, computer accessibility and cost, simulation accuracy, processing speed, and capability of the simulation language. It is noted that a visual programming tool like LabView gives a very favorable response to these considerations. Although LabView cannot replace the simulation languages such as SYSTID or ICS in terms of speed, it can be a helpful tool for communication system designers an analysts. >

Visual diagrammatic programming and block diagrams have been a valuable tool for systems modeling and simulation for several decades in research, development, and educational purposes. Despite the existing mature commercial and free software tools, there is no such kind of tool for the Python programming environment. Little information concerning algorithms to process block diagrams that represent dynamical systems and simulate the corresponding models can be found in the public domain. This is likely because simulation systems based on block diagram descriptions that have become de facto industry standards use proprietary solutions, even if their origins can be traced back to work done in research centers and universities more than seven decades ago. Therefore, the main contributions of this work can be summarized in: i) the development of an algorithm and its detailed description for processing block diagrams (multigraphs), ii) the development of DiaBloS, an open source software tool for Python that implements a diagrammatic visual programming interface and the associated block diagram processing algorithms. The latter contribution aims at code design simplicity, modularity, portability, extensibility of its functionality, and providing an open source tool for Python that could satisfy educational purposes while contributing to the understanding of algorithms for processing block diagrams. Other goals like performance, interface responsiveness aesthetics and code optimization were intentionally treated as secondary goals. We expect this contribution will not only serve as a basis for new developments in visual programming systems, but also provide a free open tool accessible to educators in many areas involving systems modeling and simulation. The numerical accuracy of DiaBloS has been validated to be the same as that achieved by commercial and open code-based existing integration routines implementing the fixed-step RK45 method. Application examples are also provided to demonstrate its capabilities and simplicity. This work also provides an overview of the evolution of existing graph-based modeling paradigms. This overview could also have a reference value, as it brings together many ideas that are connected, but spread in such a way that it becomes difficult to have a general articulated picture of the developments in the field of graphical programming tools and algorithms for processing multigraphs.

App Inventor for Android is a visual programming environment being created by Google that enables non-programmers to easily build mobile phone applications. It will become publicly available starting in 2010. A prototype implementation was piloted in introductory computer science courses at 12 colleges and universities in Fall 2009. App Inventor is designed to let students with no previous computing experience explore mobile applications, including communication, location-awareness, social networking, and massive Web-based data collections. One goal of App Inventor to change the nature of introductory computing, to make it less dissociated: more about people and their interactions with others and with the world around them. We want to enable young people - and everyone - to engage the world of mobile services and applications as creators, not just as consumers. This workshop will provide (1) a hands-on introduction to using App Inventor; (2) demonstrations of effective teaching techniques in order to help attendees decide whether and how to offer similar courses; (3) discussions by faculty in the pilot projects of their experiences and their students' work (4) time for general discussion of creating mobile applications as an introduction to computing.