Evaluation on the effectiveness of visual learning environment on programming course from students' perspectives

This paper discusses the effectiveness of visual learning environment which is used to help students in university to study programming course. The visual learning environment which is used in this study is Greenfoot and Alice. The main goal of this article is to obtain the correlation between students' satisfaction level and their grades in studying programming course using visual learning environment tools. The participants were conducted on 110 students who took programming course during their first year. A survey was sent to students about their satisfaction level in learning programming course. Two-variable correlation analysis, significance test and descriptive analysis were conducted to find out the relationship between students' learning satisfaction level and their grades in programming course. This study discusses the student perspectives that are summarized in ten questions. There is a significant correlation between independent and dependent variables. The β value is 2.09 which proves that the independent variable in the form of student's learning satisfaction level is useful to obtain better assessment of their grades. Based on their perspectives, it is found that visual learning environment tools have more significant influence in improving the students' grade than traditional learning method. Further research is needed to find out other impact factors.