Using visual logic©: three different approaches in different courses - general education, CS0, and CS1

One of the main challenges students in introductory programming courses face is learning the syntax of a particular programming language, such as C++ or Java, while they simultaneously try to understand the fundamental logic of programming constructs. Visual Logic© (www.visuallogic.org) is an interactive, graphical, flowchart tool that can be used to address this challenge. In this paper, we present three different courses, developed independently at three different colleges, using Visual Logic with completely different approaches. The first course is a General Education CS course introducing algorithmic thinking. The second is a CS0 course which uses Visual Logic for six weeks and then transitions to Python. The third course is a CS1 course which uses Visual Logic as a tool to teach programming concepts and to brainstorm solutions. Visual Logic is not taught separately, but integrated with the various Java control structures. Once students gain an understanding of basic programming logic concepts, the transition to a programming language such as Python or Java, in the same course or the next course, is often much easier for them. Though these are different approaches in three different courses, using Visual Logic has shown an increase in the interest level of the students and enhanced their learning.