Introducing Scratch as the Fundamental to Study App Inventor Programming

In this paper, the experience and lessons learned from introducing Scratch as the fundamental to learn App Inventor programming for novice programmers is presented. In the first semester, eight graduate students were taught by basic programming concepts with Scratch. They then applied these concepts to learn App Inventor programming in next semester. Data including students´ project codes, students´ questionnaire and interviews were collected and analyzed. The results reveal that students applied many programming concepts to code implementation in projects. Furthermore, positive attitudes toward this teaching sequence of programming were found in questionnaire survey and interview results. Familiarizing Scratch not only enhanced students´ experience to program in blocks-oriented visual environment in App Inventor, but also decreased the anxiety to project implementation of mobile applications. The above findings introduce future teaching to novice programmers on App Inventor programming.