Visual programming labs for introducing computer science concepts

The authors describe a series of visual programming labs for introducing computer science (CS) topics in undergraduate courses. These visual labs focus on the learning of CS concepts, not coding. They are intended to bridge the gap between lectures and programming projects. The visual labs are developed using a visual programming toolkit. They employ a build-and-test paradigm. Each lab permits the user to construct a graph by assembling and linking icons, and then to execute the graph. The user need not be aware of constructing a program, but can focus on creating a model (of a mobile robot or a component of a CPU, for instance), and then observe the behavior of that model. The labs have proven successful in CS survey courses and in an upper-level robotics course