Work in Progress: A Study of Graphical vs. Textual Programming for DSP

This work-in-progress paper describes the preliminary developments of comparing the use of Lab VIEW (a graphical programming language) to Matlab (a text-based language) in teaching digital signal processing (DSP). This paper presents the results of using both methods in a junior-level Introduction to DSP class. The class uses the text "Signal Processing First", McClellan, Schafer, Yoder, Prentice Hall, to introduce the discrete-time signal processing. In the past, a series of Matlab based mini-projects were used in addition to homework to reinforce the DSP concepts. The new version of the class uses the same mini-projects except they are based on Lab VIEW. Several quarters of concept inventory data have been collected of the Matlab version of the class. The same inventory was used with the Lab VIEW version of the class and the result compared. On the average the students using Lab VIEW had a gain of 5 points more; however there isn't enough data to know if this trend will continue. Also, student surveys were done asking students their ideas about the two languages