Supporting diverse novice programming cohorts through flexible and incremental visual constructivist pathways

Novice programmers rely mainly on formative assignments to develop their problem solving skills. Such assignments can be made more engaging by structuring them into visual tasks with instant feedback. Constructivist theory however, suggests such tasks can facilitate learning only if they are designed considering student mental models. Designing such tasks is difficult given the diversity of students in introductory programming courses. This paper presents a flexible and incremental visual constructivist model that enables different pathways for individual students. Formative and summative evaluations based on assignment tasks suggest such an approach can help improve learning outcomes and student satisfaction significantly even when students have varying cognitive abilities.