The effectiveness of visual programming for model building in middle school

The National Center of Educational Statistics (LACES) documents a troubling downward trend starting in the eighth grade in conceptual reasoning, scientific investigation, and practical reasoning. The data indicate no improvement in the eighth grade scores and by the time these students reach the 12th grade the data show a downward turn. The downward trend implicates the type of curriculum being taught in the middle school. Middle school students learn how to use reasoning in the abstract, not in the context of real-world problems. Modeling and simulation software is a possible way out of this dilemma by learning about potential implications of todaypsilas actions on tomorrowpsilas outcomes. However, programming can present a huge obstacle for middle school teachers who want to integrate model building into their curriculum. To overcome this hurdle we introduced StarLogo, which uses an interface that simplifies programming making it accessible even for novices. StarLogo makes building programs as easy as dragging color-coded puzzle-piece like statements together. The paper reports on a usability study that investigated the effectiveness of the visual programming language of StarLogo from two perspectives. Did the visual interface make programming useful for middle school teachers and effective as a teaching platform?