Applying flow-based principles in teaching computer programming to high school students: A semiotic perspective

Teaching computer programming to children and adolescents has become popular in recent years. This popularity has resulted in increased research into techniques for teaching introductory programming using visual languages, especially block-based languages. This study aims to explore new possibilities for teaching programming by adopting a hybrid environment between the descriptive and flow-oriented paradigm. The use of the Semiotic Engineering's Communicability Evaluation Method (CEM), a theoretical line of Human-Computer Interaction based on communication, was applied to assess its usefulness to a high school audience. The teaching activities took place in cycles, with successive refinements, forming an action-research strategy. In this way, we conducted a descriptive case study with a qualitative analysis of the data, in which we collected a participant observation scheme. Our results established that the use of CEM in education was appropriate, that the proposed environment was suitable for the study, and the topics were relevant to the target audience.