The Effects of Thinking Process Model Technique on Logical Thinking Skills Influencing Programming Achievement

Learning in the computer programming field is not easy for freshmen students because they need to understand the problems, design the programming steps, remember the various syntax, and solve program errors. Moreover, logical thinking skills are recognized as an essential skill for learners enrolling in this field because if they can understand the problem and identify the processes to solve it, it will be easy for them to complete programs. Therefore, comparing these together this study investigates the learners' programming learning achievement affected by their logical thinking skills. This experiment employed flowcharts as the thinking process model technique and simulated the idea with the block-based programming environment for learners to practice solving problems and designing programming processes. Then the students were allowed to create text-based programming in PHP programming language via the program editor. The fifty-three freshmen students were divided into two groups. There were twenty-nine learners in the first group with a low score of logical thinking skills, and twenty-four learners with a high score of logical thinking skills in the other group. The experiment findings revealed that the performance of logical thinking skills is statistically significant to programming achievement. Learners with strong logical thinking skills can program more efficiently than those without one.