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GeNeDis 2018 pp 425-435 | Cite as

Undergraduate Students’ Brain Activity in Visual and Textual Programming

Conference paper
First Online:
Part of the Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology book series (AEMB, volume 1194)

Abstract

Eight computer science students, novice programmers, who were in the first semester of their studies, participated in a field study in order to explore potential differences in their brain activity during programming with a visual versus a textual programming language. The students were asked to develop two specific programs in both programming languages (a total of four tasks). Measurements of cerebral activity were performed by the electroencephalography (EEG) imaging method. According to data analysis, it appears that the type of programming language did not affect the students’ brain activity.

Keywords

Computer programming education Textual programming Visual programming Neuroeducation 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by Fulbright Foundation, Greece; the American College of Greece; the Institute of Educational Policy, Greece; BiHeLab, Ionian University, Greece; and Villanova University, USA.

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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of InformaticsIonian UniversityCorfuGreece
  2. 2.Department of Computing SciencesVillanova UniversityVillanovaUSA

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