Empirical Study of Educational Programming Language for K12: Between Dolittle and Visual Basic

†† Summary Many novice programmers avoid and sometimes give up on programming learning because he/she feel many cognitive burdens in programming learning. To relieve this burden and to enhance the ability to tackle problems, we are trying to search the suitable educational programming language for K12, especially to high school students. Language that is selected for study is Dolittle and VB. Experimental lesson was gone by teaching method that cognitive load theory is applied. Cognitive load is tested by the concept of programming, algorithm implementation and program management. As an experimental lesson, we selected 2nd grade high school female students who have similar learning achievements in pre-test. The students were divided into two groups. One group had 10 Dolittle lessons and the other group had 20 Visual Basic lessons. After an experimental lesson, it was concluded that Dolittle is more effective than Visual Basic in understanding programming concept and program management. This result is same in posttest that is evaluated in programming lesson after 1 year.