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Exploring the Use of Tangible User Interfaces for Teaching Basic Java Programming Concepts: A Usability Study

Computer programming has become an essential technical proficiency needed by companies especially within the Information Technology industry. To prepare graduates with the required skills and knowledge, many university courses have integrated modules that teach students such concepts. However, learning programming languages was found to be challenging to students as concepts are abstract, making it difficult for students to understand. In order to address such challenges and to innovate from traditional learning techniques, tangible user interfaces (TUI) could potentially be used to enhance learning experience. However, limited work has been done to investigate the use of TUI for students to learn the programming languages. Due to this limitation, the usability of such systems has not been well studied even though this quality attribute is important to investigate so as to improve adoption of systems by end users. This study delves into the usability of a TUI system for teaching basic java programming concepts. To achieve this purpose, a prototype was developed using Processing and ReacTI Vision. The usability of the proposed prototype was evaluated through application of the System Usability Scale. Results revealed that the system is acceptable on the scale used although different limitations were identified.