Structured tools and conditional logic: an empirical investigation
Communications of the ACM
Graphical vs. textual representation: an empirical study of novices' program comprehension
Empirical studies of programmers: second workshop
Twinkling lights and nested loops: distributed problem solving and spreadsheet development
International Journal of Man-Machine Studies - Computer-supported cooperative work and groupware. Part 1
KidSim: programming agents without a programming language
Communications of the ACM
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
A study of end-user programming for geographic information systems
ESP '97 Papers presented at the seventh workshop on Empirical studies of programmers
Hank: A Friendly Cognitive Modelling Language for Psychology Students
VL '98 Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages
Development of Production System for Anywhere and Class Practice
Proceedings of the 2009 conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education: Building Learning Systems that Care: From Knowledge Representation to Affective Modelling
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This paper describes an investigation into the use of a visual programming language to teach computer-based modelling to undergraduate cognitive psychology students. Four sets of evaluation studies were carried out. The findings of these theoretical and empirical evaluations are related to the design principles that informed the language and the context in which it was examined. The educational benefits of gaining some practical experience of cognitive modelling where highlighted in these studies, as was the importance of introducing the visual language within a sound teaching framework. The comments of the students and tutors regarding the use of the Hank visual programming language to teach cognitive modelling indicate that Hank avoids some of the syntactic problems associated with textual programming languages, it can be used to illustrate the flow of control during a program's execution, and it is intuitive and easy to use.