An Experimental Study On The Learning Effect Of AI Program Design For Middle School Students

Program design education is set as the basis for the application of computer technology, focusing on technical ability and humanities quality, information literacy. There is no doubt the importance of program design education. But there’re many shortcomings of the current education, which still mired in the operation, emphasize skills mire. Currently, App Inventor as a representative to the visualization, modular programming tools liberates students’hands. It convenient for students to master basic programming knowledge and skills to improve learning efficiency and intrinsic motivation, greatly stimulate student interest. It gradually becomes the new darling of the current program design education. Secondly, the Proposing of computational thinking provides a new direction to overcome the "narrow tool" of the situation and highlight the value of the program design course.So this research aims to try to build around the concept of computational thinking, with App Inventor as the platform, with project learning as a medium to solve some problems that existing in the programming teaching. Quasi-experimental study method is used in this paper. The experimental objects of this study are the students of App Inventor curriculum of Wenzhou High School.The experiment evaluates the adaptability of the student through the study of App Inventor teaching from the following two aspects (1) there is whether or not a difference in the attitude with the programming; (2) there is whether or not increase in the knowledge and technical of the programming.Through the statistical analysis of experimental data, the experimental results show that:(1)There was significant difference for some students in the level of attitudes after the study of App Inventor teaching in the concept of computational thinking. They show interest and using tendency in the areas: the lower performance of "anxiety" level, the higher the "like" level, but firm "usefulness" and higher levels of "behavioral intentions."(2) Students had master the basic knowledge and technology of the programming. At the same time, they could develop some creative works of mobile application with combining with the real life and existing knowledge experience.