Visual Programming Environments for Object-Oriented Programming: Acceptance and Effects on Student Motivation

This paper presents an experiment in which visual programming environments have been used in programming courses aiming at helping students to acquire the competencies of a course on object-oriented programming. This paper is centered on the analysis of the acceptance by the students of this type of environment, as well as its effect on the motivation of the students. The results obtained show differences in their answers according to the two possible characteristics of the students analyzed: their gender and the fact of being or not a newcomer.