Microworlds, Games and Collaboration: three effective approaches to support novices in learning programming

Specially designed programming environments have been used for decades to support the novice programmers learning programming. In this paper, we present various forms of Educational Technology that have guided the design of educational programming environments the last two decades. The design and aspirations of three distinct programming environments developed at the University of Macedonia are presented. These include a Programming Microworld, an Educational Game and a Distributed Pair Programming system. The potential benefits of the different features of the three environments are presented along with results from their evaluation. Conclusions are drawn regarding the technologies incorporated in these different programming environments. Specifically, emphasis is given on technologies and features that seem to be important for motivating and engaging students in learning programming and should be taken into account by researchers designing new educational programming environments.

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