In Computer Science (CS) education, the term "laboratory" often means a room full of terminals where students go, on their own time, to work on their programming projects. This project seeks to change this definition by developing and disseminating materials for a series of scheduled, structured, and supervised laboratory sessions. The labs will complement, not replace, the traditional lecture-and-project paradigm in introductory survey courses in CS. The labs will be implemented in a visual programming environment that permits students to focus on concepts, rather than language syntax. The software and related materials will be developed and tested during a one- year pilot program. The program will yield data about the usefulness of laboratories in introductory survey courses in CS and about the utility of visual programming environments for learning.
