Incorporating educational robots and visual programming environments in introductory programming courses

Introductory programming courses are very challenging both for students and teachers. Several authors propose incorporating either educational robots or visual programming environments as a means to ease learning of programming. This paper presents three experiences that use these kinds of tools with the aim of applying Kolb's experiential learning cycle. The experiences have been carried out in the first year courses of programming in the Bachelor in Computer Management and Information Systems Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of Vitoria-Gasteiz in the UPV/EHU.