In response to a number of difficulties many beginners exhibit in trying to master a programming language such as BASIC or LOGO, a “metacourse” was developed to be integrated into a teacher's normal course materials as an enriching “vitamin shot.” The metacourse in BASIC consists of mental models, problem-solving strategies, key concepts, and other structures that may help students to understand more deeply and wield more artfully the knowledge they are acquiring during their regular instruction in BASIC. Highly encouraging results, in terms of increased mastery of BASIC, were found in two large scale empirical studies conducted in a number of high school BASIC programming classes. Metacourse classes exhibited improved performance on a variety of BASIC programming tasks, ranging from comprehension of simple commands to debugging and production of small programs. This same pattern was observed with interventions which offered teachers considerable support (Study 1), or the minimal support more typical of “normal” classroom conditions (Study 2).
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