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This is the second part of a two-part series that describes a pilot programming course in which high school students majoring in computer science were introduced to the visual, scenario-based programming language of live sequence charts. The main rationale for the course was that computer science students should be exposed to at least two very different programming paradigms and that LSCs, with their...
In this paper, we propose the Computational Thinking concept, which is obtained by enhancing by merging the values of Computational Thinking and Agile. We analyze four existing teaching models for training Cooperative Thinkers, supported by experimental data, and propose an educational path that can promote the early development of this complex skill.
In an earlier study, we observed that students in a small graduate class who used Cloud Computing (CC) for their programming assignments improved their analysis-to-reuse (A2R) skills more than students who didn't use CC. That preliminary result motivated us to see if the use of CC in programming assignments would yield similar results for a broader range of classes and students. To this end, this...
The purpose of this study is to examine generalized self-efficacy and attitudes of the F.M.V. Işık University Engineering Faculty students of Introduction to Programming Course (CSE101) with respect to student gender and course language (Turkish-English). A total of 114 university students, 40 female and 74 male, participated in the research. In order to measure students' self-efficacy perceptions,...
Prior work showed that in 2001 and 2003, workers in America who used spreadsheets or databases, and who did programming, earned 9 to 13% more than similar workers who did not use spreadsheets nor did programming. Such a fact, if still true, could help motivate workers to do programming and/or to create spreadsheets. This paper presents a study replicating these analyses using 2012 data. The results...
Many instructors consider a programming environment replete with a large variety of interactive objects and commands a liability for teaching introductory programming. In fact, such an environment is an important pedagogical tool, whose instructional capabilities can be amplified by discovery-based programming praxes — predefined programs with embedded comments that instruct students to browse and...
In this research, a tool for evaluating algorithmic thinking ability of the primary schoolchildren was developed. This tool is based on the three categories of operations used to construct algorithms, namely, sequential operations, conditional branching operations, and iterative operations. Each question in the tool checks to see if the examinee understands the concept of one of the three categories...
Given the growing demand for skilled workers from the Computer Science field, the high attrition rate of entering Computer Science students is a serious problem at most universities. Much research exists on evaluating the reasons of failure with the introductory Computer Science curriculum referred to as the CS1, CS2 and CS3 courses. Current research has proposed methods to predict patterns and characteristics...
In some CS0 settings, innovation and use of technology are not always an option due to costs, poor internet infrastructure and cultural aspects of teaching. It also happens that students are not familiar with CS since they are not educated about it at schools. These circumstances pose a more challenging situation in terms of encouraging beginners to become interested in this subject during an introductory...
Designing course activities in harmony with class assignments and tests while providing both adequate challenges and appropriate content progression is critical in introductory programming courses (CS1). Such fine-tuned practices help students build the right mindset to perform better and prevent potential discouragement due to disharmonious test challenges. In this study, we apply levels of the cognitive...
Almost all college and university courses have integrated disciplines for the teaching of programming in their curricula. The importance of knowing “how to program” has contributed towards increasing private and public initiatives for the teaching of programming in different countries. Many of such initiatives include changes in the curriculum of primary and high schools, replacing disciplines by...
The difficulties faced by students and teachers in learning and teaching introductory programming has been a research issue over the years. Demotivation is common in many novice programming students, who are not able to cope with the natural difficulties associated to programming learning. It is up to the teacher to find strategies to help students and keep them motivated during the course. The objective...
Students often have difficulties in learning how to program in an object-oriented style. One of the causes of this problem is that object-oriented languages require the programmer to be familiarized with a big amount of non-trivial concepts, to write even the simplest programs. For several years we have been teaching introductory OOP courses using an incremental learning path, which starts with a...
We describe the construction and assessment of a plan to foster student success in Computer Science (CS) in response to continued enrollment growth. We examined cross correlations of grades from student transcripts from the past four years to determine what patterns of grades in early classes were indicative of future success. The resulting statistics and visualizations showed that students generally...
In this paper, we analyzed whether the ability of students to solve problems can be influenced by the implementation of Computational Thinking (CT) in the teaching of mathematics. In this sense, we performed a quasi-experiment with students in the Brazilian's Basic Education Regular System (particularly in a group of students around fifteen years old) comparing their performance after being trained...
Instructional scaffolding is a well-researched, commonly-practiced educational technique whereby support is temporarily provided as an individual learns [1]. Grounded in constructivist teaching and learning theory, scaffolding historically referring to support provided by a teacher to a student. However, in the modern learning environment, instructors have access to a wide range of tools and techniques...
This research explores the psychology of programming and the pedagogical environment in a certificate granting urban immigrant engineer retraining program in New York City. The program is aimed at teaching under-represented immigrant engineer students to learn how to program in the Java programming language. The programming concepts and the fostered pedagogical environment were implemented in three-hour...
Several studies suggest that the teaching of software testing should begin as early as possible, since introductory programming courses. In this way, the teaching of both subjects, programming and testing, becomes an integrated teaching approach. Testing practices in this context can provide a timely feedback to students while they are still working on programming assignments and, as a result, increase...
The interest on effective strategies to improve the learning process increased over the years. The usual practice is to know the characteristics of a student and how those can affect the learning style. The style describes how learners collect, select, interpret, organize and store information. This paper overviews the application of learning styles and how those affect the teaching of introductory...
The inherent abstractness in nature and intangibility in essence of computer programming concepts, present weak mental models that make them to be intuitively challenging to be easily understood by students. This remains a key factor in general underperformance of students in computer programming courses. Pedagogical use of metaphors is widely acknowledged as a means of addressing the challenge. As...
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