The Learning Psychology of Visual Programming for Object-Orien

A teaching environment featuring a visual object-oriented programming language is an improvement over existing object-oriented teaching methods using textual languages. We propose to create such an environment, which will provide a complete course in objectorientation. The course will be based on the key object-oriented concepts and mechanisms. The visual programming environment will avoid the problems other environments have when used for teaching, as it will not feature explicit metaclasses and metaphors and will be kept simple to avoid confusion. The visual programming tool will be object-centred and object-focused, and feature a direct manipulation interface, to reinforce object thinking. It will be flexible to allow staged learning development with intermediate tests.