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Contributions: The underrepresentation of women in computer science (CS) majors has long been a focus of attention in many academic documents, the majority of them from the United States and Europe. There is, however, a lack of information about educational interventions (EIs) for women in computing in Latin America. The contribution of this article is to cover this gap and describe what researchers in Latin American countries have been publishing about the recruitment and retention of women in the CS field. Background: Many EIs targeting female students at different educational levels--K-12, undergraduate, and graduate--have been undertaken to increase the participation of women in computing in Latin America. However, descriptions of these activities rarely are included in international academic databases. Research Questions: This literature mapping addresses two main research questions (RQ) about the topic of women in computing in academic publications in Latin American countries: RQ1) what are the characteristics of the publications about women in computing in Latin America? and RQ2) what are the published interventions to recruit and retain women in computing in Latin America? To answer RQ1, six subquestions were created covering year, language, country of origin, document type, and professional track. Furthermore, for RQ2, two subquestions were created involving educational level and the use of software development with a female theme. Methodology: This investigation used the systematic literature mapping process. To achieve a broad coverage of papers, the following sources were included: Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, EBSCO, the proceedings of the Latin American Women in Computing Conference (LAWCC), and those of the Women in Technology (WIT) workshop colocated with the annual conference of the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC). The included papers were published in the last decade (2010-2020) and written in English, Portuguese, or Spanish. Findings: The literature mapping encompasses 197 academic documents, 48.2% of which were written in Portuguese, 28.7% in English, and 23.1% in Spanish. The papers originated from 15 of the 20 Latin American countries. Brazil and Costa Rica have the highest number of publications overall. The documents describe initiatives to increase the participation of women in computing majors that cover the entire educational spectrum, from K-12 to graduate programs, but papers targeting populations in higher education have started to appear recently.

Computer science (CS) is becoming an increasingly diverse domain. This paper reports on an initiative designed to introduce underrepresented populations to computing using an eclectic, multifaceted approach. As part of a yearlong computing course, students engage in Maker activities, participatory simulations, and computing projects that foreground the social and collaborative aspects of CS. Collectively, these activities are designed to introduce learners to the growing diversity of what CS looks like in the 21st century. This paper lays out the practical and theoretical motivations for the Computational Thinking for Girls (CT4G) project, specifically highlighting the use of Making through physical and social computing as ways to engage students in CS. A snapshot of one activity from the program is provided--"Wearing the Web"--in which students use open-hardware programmable badges to explore the underlying structure and technology that enables the Internet. Data from the first year of the CT4G program are presented to show the positive effects that this diverse introduction to CS is having on the students with respect to their attitudes toward CS.

Contributions: The underrepresentation of women in computer science (CS) majors has long been a focus of attention in many academic documents, the majority of them from the United States and Europe. There is, however, a lack of information about educational interventions (EIs) for women in computing in Latin America. The contribution of this article is to cover this gap and describe what researchers in Latin American countries have been publishing about the recruitment and retention of women in the CS field. Background: Many EIs targeting female students at different educational levels—K-12, undergraduate, and graduate—have been undertaken to increase the participation of women in computing in Latin America. However, descriptions of these activities rarely are included in international academic databases. Research Questions: This literature mapping addresses two main research questions (RQ) about the topic of women in computing in academic publications in Latin American countries: RQ1) what are the characteristics of the publications about women in computing in Latin America? and RQ2) what are the published interventions to recruit and retain women in computing in Latin America? To answer RQ1, six subquestions were created covering year, language, country of origin, document type, and professional track. Furthermore, for RQ2, two subquestions were created involving educational level and the use of software development with a female theme. Methodology: This investigation used the systematic literature mapping process. To achieve a broad coverage of papers, the following sources were included: Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, EBSCO, the proceedings of the Latin American Women in Computing Conference (LAWCC), and those of the Women in Technology (WIT) workshop colocated with the annual conference of the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC). The included papers were published in the last decade (2010–2020) and written in English, Portuguese, or Spanish. Findings: The literature mapping encompasses 197 academic documents, 48.2% of which were written in Portuguese, 28.7% in English, and 23.1% in Spanish. The papers originated from 15 of the 20 Latin American countries. Brazil and Costa Rica have the highest number of publications overall. The documents describe initiatives to increase the participation of women in computing majors that cover the entire educational spectrum, from K-12 to graduate programs, but papers targeting populations in higher education have started to appear recently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the proven success of using computer video games as a context for teaching introductory programming (CS1/2) courses, barriers including the lack of adoptable materials, required background expertise (in graphics/games), and institutional acceptance still prevent interested faculty members from experimenting with this approach. Game-themed programming assignment (GTA) modules are designed specifically for these faculty members. The GTA modules are independent, and each is a self-contained game-like programming assignment that challenges students on concepts pertaining to a specific curriculum topic area. A faculty member can selectively pick and choose a subset of GTA modules to experiment with and gradually adopt the materials in his or her own classes. Each GTA module also includes a step-by-step tutorial guide that supports and encourages interested faculty to develop their own expertise and game-themed materials. This paper begins with a survey of previous results. Based on this survey, the paper summarizes the important considerations when designing materials for selective adoption. The paper then describes the design, implementation, and assessment of the GTA modules. The results from ongoing GTA workshops for CS1/2 faculty members and from a yearlong project in adopting the GTA modules in classes are then presented. In this case, the collected results verified that introductory programming concepts can be examined, practiced, and learned by means of GTA modules when neither the faculty nor the students involved have backgrounds in graphics or games. More importantly, these results demonstrated that it is straightforward to "blend" the GTA modules into existing classes with minimum alterations. In these ways, the GTA modules are excellent catalysts enabling faculty to begin exploring and developing their own expertise and materials to teach with games. (Contains 14 figures.)

This paper reports on work undertaken within a pilot study concerned with the design, development, and evaluation of online computer science training courses. Drawing on recent developments in e-learning technology, these courses were structured around the principles of a learner-oriented approach for use with adult learners. The paper describes a methodological framework for the evaluation of three main educational issues involved in the learning process of Web-based computer science training courses, and analyzes the results of this study with the aim of providing an improved learning design, and environment, for these courses. The findings highlight a number of potential barriers to learning and indicate the failed indicators that need to be improved in order to enhance effective performance. The authors give their views both on ways to improve the proposed learning environment and on the need for an optimal balance between asynchronous and synchronous activities, enhanced collaboration, and interactions among adult learners and e-tutors.

This paper proposes a collaborative approach to enhancing the student learning experience based on Web 2.0 principles. Specifically, wiki Web sites are used by students for collaboration and for publication of course assignments, which are then shared with the class. Web 2.0 principles include: the Web as platform, harnessing collective intelligence, data are the next Intel Inside, and rich user experiences. Based on a case study in a junior-level undergraduate class, this paper studies a set of six factors with comprehensive grading and evaluation criteria that are critical to make this approach successful. The six factors are knowledge base, motivation, research, social aspects, presentation, and feedback and support. The data collected show that most of the students who participated feel that this approach is exciting and rewarding, and that even some undergraduate students are able to produce original and innovative concepts. The data also show other interesting phenomena with respect to motivation, undergraduate research, and social aspects. Finally, the paper proposes a methodology of conducting a wiki project in a university class using a cyclic constant improvement process. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.)

The development of collaborative Web applications does not follow a software engineering methodology. This is because when university students study Web applications in general, and collaborative Web portals in particular, they are not being trained in the use of software engineering techniques to develop collaborative Web portals. This paper presents a strategy for teaching collaborative Web portals based on reverse engineering and reuse mechanisms to engineer the collaborative Web portals' development. This strategy was successfully used in a final-year course of a Computer Science program at Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain. Its use has demonstrated an improvement in the maintainability of the Web projects developed as well as a decrease in the number of failures during the test phase. This is a very important step toward the engineering of Web applications. The students' grades for the same subject, with the same content and lecturers, also improved compared to those from previous years. The strategy, the details of its use, the results obtained after analyzing the projects the students developed, and their final grades are described in this paper. (Contains 15 figures and 11 tables.)

This paper describes a one-credit laboratory course for freshmen majoring in electrical and computer engineering (ECE). The course is motivational in nature and exposes the students to a wide range of areas of electrical and computer engineering. The authors believe it is important to give freshmen a broad perspective of what ECE is all about, and to shine some light on topics they will see later in the curriculum. Yet with limited total credit hours in the curriculum, the ECE Department did not want to commit a significant number of hours, nor did the Department want to take significant study time away from the students' core freshman courses, such as calculus and physics. The resulting single-credit-hour course meets only one day a week for two hours, with a format that combines both lecture and experimentation. The course is divided into a series of one- to three-week modules, each covering a selected topic in electrical and computer engineering. This paper describes the purpose, format, and content of the course. A survey of the students regarding the course is also discussed. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.)

There is an increasing need for an effective method of teaching bioinformatics. Increased progress and availability of computer-based tools for educating students have led to the implementation of a computer-based system for teaching bioinformatics as described in this paper. Bioinformatics is a recent, hybrid field of study combining elements of biology, statistics, and computer science. This paper describes the implementation of a system called bioinformatics foundational learning objects workbench (BioFLOW), that is intended to be used by instructors to educate their students in bioinformatics principles at a variety of grade levels. BioFLOW functions by dividing topics in bioinformatics into modules. These modules cover a wide variety of topics and may be inserted into different courses in bioinformatics-related fields, providing students with a basic understanding of bioinformatics if they choose to pursue it as a field of advanced study. BioFLOW also incorporates a method for assessing the performance of the modules and the students. Assessment includes evaluation of students' learning styles and their performance on quizzes and is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the modules. Utilized together, these tools can be used to refine the content of the teaching modules and thus provide an effective system for educating students in bioinformatics. (Contains 1 table and 8 figures.)

This paper describes a one-year introductory robotics course sequence focusing on computational aspects of robotics for third- and fourth-year students. The key challenges this curriculum addresses are "scalability," i.e., how to teach a robotics class with a limited amount of hardware to a large audience, "student assessment," i.e., how to assess the students' success on robotic design and programming assignments, and "depth versus breadth," i.e., how to down-select content from the interdisciplinary field of robotics to computer science students. This is achieved by combining simulation-based laboratory assignments, which can be conducted anywhere and anytime, with compatible hardware devices that allow a seamless transition from simulation to real hardware, and a focus on performance-based assessment with an open-ended final project/competition. Content learning and retention is assessed for a subset of students who successfully went through the proposed curriculum. All class materials as well as hardware-in particular, a low-cost, highly articulated robotic arm developed for teaching advanced robotics concepts-are open-source and available online.

Contribution: This paper argues for a shift in how students’ team project experiences are assessed. Findings from this paper suggest that it is not enough to consider student-reported data in assessing team dynamics; hidden gendered behavior may be impacting students in ways that students do not realize or report. Background: Although the number of women in engineering is rising, difficulties still exist for female students in electrical engineering and computer science, particularly in team projects. Male and female students may have very different project experiences, due to differing levels of confidence/self-efficacy, difficult team dynamics, or inequitable task division. Research Questions: This paper aimed to elucidate what differences exist in the project experience between male and female students, considering self-reported measures (engineering confidence/self-efficacy, time spent on task, and team satisfaction) and observational study. Methodology: Students completed pre/post-project surveys, weekly logs, and post-project interviews to report and discuss their engineering confidence/self-efficacy, project task selection, and team satisfaction. This paper reports a case study of one student team, observed by a researcher throughout the project course. Findings: While student-reported data implied a lack of gender division (male and female students had the same levels of confidence, completed the same project tasks, and were similarly satisfied with their teams), the observational study implied that the student-reported data may not be telling the whole story. Given the difficult team dynamics observed in the student team (but not reported by students), findings suggest that difficult gender dynamics may go unrecognized by students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embedded system technologies are undergoing dramatic change. Competent embedded system engineers are becoming a scarce resource in the industry. Given this, universities should revise their specialist education to meet industry demands. In this paper, a spirally tight-coupled step-by-step educational method, based on an analysis of industry requirements, is proposed. The learning process consists of multiple learning circles piled up in a spiral. Each learning circle consists of three steps: lecture, demo, and hands-on practice, which are tight-coupled to enable students to readily revisit essential knowledge. The circle currently being studied is directly based on the previous circle, so as to maintain a smooth learning curve. Since students can quickly see the result of their work, their motivation to learn remains high. Since a learning circle takes only a short period to complete, the core knowledge and skills can be repeated in different forms across the three types of educational step so that students can master them. The students' achievement and performance using the proposed method show that it can enable them to master the requisite knowledge and effectively transform this into skills. (Contains 5 tables and 8 figures.)

This paper describes the authors' experience of teaching agile software development to students of computer science, software engineering, and other related disciplines, and comments on the implications of this and the lessons learned. It is based on the authors' eight years of experience in teaching agile software methodologies to various groups of students at different universities, in different cultural settings, and in a number of courses and seminars. It specifically discusses three different courses on agile software development, given in different teaching settings and at different levels, and briefly surveys variations to these courses given elsewhere. Based on the experience acquired, analyses and evaluations conducted, and current pedagogical trends at relevant university departments, the authors provide recommendations on how to overcome potential problems in teaching agile software development and make their adoption more effective. (Contains 3 tables.)

The computer science classes in China's institutions of higher education often have large numbers of students. In addition, many institutions offer "blended" classes that include both on-campus and online students. These large blended classrooms have long suffered from a lack of interactivity. Many online classes simply provide recorded instructor lectures to which distance students listen after downloading. This format only reinforces the negative effects of passive nonparticipatory learning. At a major university in Shanghai, researchers and developers actively seek technological interventions that can greatly increase interactivity in blended classes. They have developed a cutting-edge mobile learning system that can deliver live broadcasts of real-time classroom teaching to online students with mobile devices. Their system allows students to customize their means of content-reception, based on when and where the students are tuning into the broadcast. The system also supports short text-messaging and instant polls. Through these features, students can ask questions and make suggestions in real time, and the instructor can respond immediately. This paper describes this system in detail and also reports results from a formal implementation of the system with a blended classroom of 562 students (of whom 90% were online). (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

Software engineering (SE) is a multidimensional field that involves activities in various areas and disciplines, such as computer science, project management, and system engineering. Though modern SE curricula include designated courses that address these various subjects, an advanced summary course that synthesizes them is still missing. Such a course would enable young practitioners to get a comprehensive description of SE, to experience a genuine software development process, and to appreciate the relations and tradeoffs between the various domains of SE. This paper proposes a multidimensional SE course framework aimed at giving SE students just such comprehensive, cross-paradigm, practical, and theoretical experience and background. The course is organized along four axes: a) fundamentals of SE; b) practices and tools; c) productization; and d) technology evolution. Each of these axes, in themselves multifaceted, enables an examination of SE on various scales and from different perspectives; together they create a holistic multidimensional description of SE. The course is evaluated according to accepted criteria highlighting the course scope, pedagogic decisions, and relevance. The authors also describe their experience of teaching the course three times in the Tel Aviv University and the academic college of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo, Israel. (Contains 6 tables, 1 figure, and 3 footnotes.)

Embedded systems have been applied widely, not only to consumer products and industrial machines, but also to new applications such as ubiquitous or sensor networking. The increasing role of software (SW) in embedded system development has caused a great demand for embedded SW engineers, and university education for embedded SW engineering has become important. The embedded software engineers should learn system architecture design and hardware (HW) technologies as well as SW technologies. However, only a few universities offer education courses for embedded software engineering that include system architecture design and HW technologies. This paper proposes a student experiment method that is designed to nurture embedded SW engineers by teaching these technologies. The proposed method includes an experiment for embedded SW development, an experiment for embedded HW development and a HW/SW co-design experiment, which help students learn system architecture design skills such as system modeling, HW/SW tradeoff design, and SW and HW module design. A model of each experiment was developed and evaluated. (Contains 5 tables and 11 figures.)

This paper presents the main findings, and lessons learned, from introducing a synchronous peer collaboration activity in a distance learning computer science course. Synergo, a software that supports such an approach, was used in this activity. The organizational, technical, and academic challenges of introducing this activity in the course are discussed. After analyzing the students' interaction and their opinions, and evaluating the final results, it was found that this activity was received positively by the group of students concerned, who engaged in peer tutoring and used this as an opportunity to break the isolation of the distance learning setting and to forge links with each other. (Contains 1 table, 3 figures, and 1 footnote.)

Computer science (CS) is becoming an increasingly diverse domain. This paper reports on an initiative designed to introduce underrepresented populations to computing using an eclectic, multifaceted approach. As part of a yearlong computing course, students engage in Maker activities, participatory simulations, and computing projects that foreground the social and collaborative aspects of CS. Collectively, these activities are designed to introduce learners to the growing diversity of what CS looks like in the 21st century. This paper lays out the practical and theoretical motivations for the Computational Thinking for Girls (CT4G) project, specifically highlighting the use of Making through physical and social computing as ways to engage students in CS. A snapshot of one activity from the program is provided—Wearing the Web—in which students use open-hardware programmable badges to explore the underlying structure and technology that enables the Internet. Data from the first year of the CT4G program are presented to show the positive effects that this diverse introduction to CS is having on the students with respect to their attitudes toward CS. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contribution: This paper contributes to the literature by confirming the existence, in gender and socio-economic diversified higher educational environments, of differential evaluation ratings given by students to their teachers. Background: Women and low socio-economic classes have historically been under-represented, both as students and teachers. Various policies and measures are being put in place internationally to raise their standing, equity, and success as they progress in their careers. To be effective, the after effects of these policies must be investigated and understood. Research Questions: This paper addressed the question of whether gender and socio-economic differences, in both teachers and students, affect students’ opinion of their teachers in higher education, across a number of disciplines. Methodology: The research analyzed the differentials in students’ ratings of their teachers in five disciplines in the field of education. Data was drawn from student responses to the surveys conducted in a large Indian university at the end of each course unit. The survey questions elicit their perceptions of teaching quality in the disciplines of civil engineering, electrical engineering, computer science engineering, mathematics, humanities and social sciences. This paper analyzes 112 919 and 16 354 complete sets of student ratings, to study the gender and socio-economic diversity based effects respectively. Statistical multivariate and univariate general linear models were used to derive the relevant results and graphs. Findings: The study reveals the existence of socio-economic status bias, gender-typical behavior, gender-atypical behavior, and same-gender and cross-gender biases; these resulted in differential ratings in the disciplines examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This document presents a systematic bibliographic review that demonstrates the need to conduct research on how the user experience impacts the development of computational thinking. Background: In the field of computer science, computational thinking is defined as a method that enhances problem-solving skills, system design, and human behavior understanding. Over the last few decades, several tools have been proposed for the development of computational thinking skills; however, there is no area of study that evaluates the implications or the impact that these types of platforms have on users belonging to any knowledge area. Research Question: Do user interfaces influence the development of computational thinking skills? Methodology: To address this issue, a systematic review of the literature was conducted using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) methodology for analyzing and evaluating scientific publications. Findings: The results show that despite the dearth of literature on the subject, the specific design of a user interface has a significant impact on the development of computational thinking. Bearing the above in mind, it is necessary to conduct research that delves more deeply into the effects caused by the technologies that are used to develop computational thinking, this being a line of research that is worthy of consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a collaborative approach to enhancing the student learning experience based on Web 2.0 principles. Specifically, wiki Web sites are used by students for collaboration and for publication of course assignments, which are then shared with the class. Web 2.0 principles include: the Web as platform, harnessing collective intelligence, data are the next Intel Inside, and rich user experiences. Based on a case study in a junior-level undergraduate class, this paper studies a set of six factors with comprehensive grading and evaluation criteria that are critical to make this approach successful. The six factors are knowledge base, motivation, research, social aspects, presentation, and feedback and support. The data collected show that most of the students who participated feel that this approach is exciting and rewarding, and that even some undergraduate students are able to produce original and innovative concepts. The data also show other interesting phenomena with respect to motivation, undergraduate research, and social aspects. Finally, the paper proposes a methodology of conducting a wiki project in a university class using a cyclic constant improvement process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an efficient method of teaching impulse voltage testing of power transformers to undergraduate students of power system groups in electrical engineering departments, as a part of a high-voltage course for senior undergraduate students. The paper shows how to simulate the power transformer and impulse generator to teach students the basics of impulse voltage testing of power transformers and to practice analyzing the test results. In the first part of the paper, the effect of wave shaping of the voltage waveform is simulated to teach the behavior of the impulse generator, and in the second part, impulse voltage testing of a transformer is simulated. Evaluation of the simulation over several semesters with more than 80 students is very positive in terms of their developing confidence in an understanding of this test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Database technology affects many disciplines beyond computer science and business. This paper describes two animations developed with images and color that visually and dynamically introduce fundamental relational database concepts and querying to students of many majors. The goal is for educators in diverse academic disciplines to incorporate the animations in their existing courses in order to meet their pedagogical needs. The introduction of the animations was assessed and evaluated within several contexts, including non-majors courses offered by computer scientists as well as a course on computational molecular biology. The evaluation indicated that student knowledge of fundamental database concepts improved significantly with the use of the courseware. The animations provide visual learners with an engaging method to learn the topics presented with the ability to replay the dynamic presentation. Overall, the evaluation indicates the accessibility of database topics across the disciplines as well as the specific concepts that need further elaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the use of a student conference as a novel experience aimed at motivating students enrolled in various computer architecture courses, such as Microprocessor Systems. The goal was to increase student engagement, to decrease failure rates, and to introduce students to the world of research. This multidisciplinary experience enabled students from several universities and cities to participate in a scientific conference while addressing novel research topics. This experience, and the understanding thus gained of the assorted roles of participants in a scientific conference—authors, reviewers, and local, steering, and scientific committees—served to increase the engagement and collaboration of both students and instructors and helped to decrease the dropout rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of plagiarism is discussed in the context of university education in disciplines related to computing. The focus is therefore mainly on software plagiarism. First, however, a case is made for the claim that the most important reason that plagiarism cannot be tolerated lies in the essence of the concept of a university as it is rooted in the Western cultural tradition. The main contribution of this paper is in providing firsthand insight into students' views on some of the delicate questions related to student plagiarism. However, this paper presents views from both sides of the question, including the views of staff members. This paper is quite unique in that it is coauthored by students who provide independent comments and recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contribution: A conceptual model for task allocation among student teams in project-based learning (PBL) is proposed in this paper, along with a discussion on ways gender can affect teams’ apportioning of roles in inequitable ways in STEM PBL. Background: Studies find that men and women report taking on different roles in PBL projects, and that there is a relationship between team gender breakdown and students’ satisfaction with PBL teams, with teams less happy with the inclusion of more women. Both male and female students on teams with two or more women report lower team satisfaction than men on teams of just men, or men and women on teams with a single woman Research Questions: How do students self-select, negotiate, and allocate tasks on PBL teams? How does past PBL experience influence task allocation? How does gender affect task allocation? Methodology: First-year students (N = 60) completed reflections about task assignment during a semester-long PBL experience. Findings: Individual student characteristics that are related to gender—including interests, skills, experiences, and self-efficacy—interact with students’ goal orientations to lead to individual preferences regarding tasks. Ultimate task allocations are distributed in a non-gender-neutral way following individual preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on some vexed issues in the preparation of computer science (CS) curricula, including the systematization of the different areas of the technology, the definition of topics and subtopics to teach, their distribution across the various computing courses, and the relationships between them. It is a common opinion that such didactical difficulties are caused by the fast evolution of information technology. To show how this opinion has little ground, a comparison is made between the methods adopted by educators of informatics and of electronics; in fact, also the electronic technology advances at a similarly fast pace. This analysis brings evidence how the experts in electronics have a well-described theoretical basis that can be logically mapped and progressively taught to give a clear understanding of the field. The same cannot be said in CS. Educators in this field are not aided by underpinning theories in an effective manner. Experts have a mass of concepts at hand, but no network of logical connections to order them. This paper does not present a practical solution to these educational difficulties, but observes how the missing assistance of computer theorists may result in unnecessary expenditure of energy and considerable additional effort. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes a knowledge-based strategy for recommending educational resources—worked problems, exercises, quiz questions, and lecture notes—to learners in the first two courses in the introductory sequence of a computer science major (CS1 and CS2). The goal of the recommendation strategy is to provide support for personalized access to the resources that exist in open educational repositories. The strategy uses: 1) a description of the resources based on metadata standards enriched by ontology-based semantic indexing, and 2) contextual information about the user (her knowledge of that particular field of learning). The results of an experimental analysis of the strategy's performance are presented. These demonstrate that the proposed strategy offers a high level of personalization and can be adapted to the user. An application of the strategy to a repository of computer science open educational resources was well received by both educators and students and had promising effects on the student performance and dropout rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper shows how significantly computer science instructors can disagree when grading code writing questions in introductory computer science (CS1) exams. Certain solutions are considered “very good” by some instructors and “very bad” by others. The study identifies four factors as possible contributors to such differences between graders: 1) disagreement on the role of syntax in CS1; 2) absence of objective measures for the seriousness of logic errors; 3) variance in how rubrics are constructed; and 4) the use of subjective judgement while grading. Background: Code writing questions are widely used in CS1 exams. Understanding differences in how graders approach such questions can help the CS education community become more informed about how to design valid assessments for summative and formative purposes. Research Questions: Do graders differ significantly in how they score student programs? What are the main factors to which differences between graders could be attributed? Methodology: A number of CS1 instructors and TAs were asked to score pieces of code resembling student solutions to CS1 exam questions, and were asked to answer open ended questions on how they approach grading in CS1 exams. Responses were then analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings: There is no consensus on how code writing questions in CS1 exams should be graded. Differences in opinion on how many points to award can be very significant, even for very simple programs and between graders in the same institution. Some graders assign grades that do not necessarily agree with how many points they believe the student solution is worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: An approach is presented to provide contextualized feedback for students using a project management (PM) tool. This approach covers the ten PM knowledge areas, guiding students through the planning of software projects. Background: Because software PM is unfeasible without the support of a PM tool there is a growing demand that these tools be taught in the higher education computer courses. Hence, several approaches already have been proposed to improve this teaching, such as educational PM tools or simulators, which facilitate the application of specific PM techniques and the treatment of their results. Another approach to improve the teaching of PM tools is instructional feedback, but little information is as yet available on how to provide instructional feedback when teaching software PM. Intended Outcomes: Instructional feedback, essential to helping students to learn, is based on an evaluation of their actions and decisions. To take advantage of this instructional approach, this paper proposes an instructional feedback technique to be employed in an instructional unit (IU) teaching PM tools aligned with the project management body of knowledge. Application Design: This technique was evaluated through an experiment carried out in undergraduate computer courses. Control and experiential groups were exposed to the same IU, with only the experiential group using the instructional feedback technique. Findings: The proposed feedback technique contributes to student learning, meeting students’ need for better explanations to acquire a comprehensive understanding of PM theory and its practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Internet era, students have increasingly lost interest in traditional lectures; as a consequence, their learning motivation and exam performance have decreased. The widespread adoption of learner-centered teaching methods that address this issue faces certain barriers, including: 1) the significant faculty effort necessary to prepare e-learning materials; 2) significant extra time required for active online communication with students; 3) student resistance to taking an active role in their education; and 4) lecturers’ common belief that learner-centered teaching activities do not allow discussion of all the required topics. This paper presents a case study based on one offering of an introductory digital systems course taught with a combination of learner-centered strategies selected to overcome these barriers and improve student performance. These measures included: 1) improving the student-teacher relationship; 2) applying intriguing, inductive, and counterintuitive approaches to introducing new concepts; 3) adopting puzzle-based quizzes integrated with peer instruction; 4) using an audience response system; 5) replacing certain lectures with tutorials; 6) reducing course duration; and 7) using a graphics tablet. The results obtained demonstrate significant improvements in lecture attendance and in student performance. The author believes that the approach presented here can benefit other engineering educators in similar courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of a constructivist 21st-century learning model to implement a week-long workshop, delivered as a “hackathon,” to encourage preuniversity teenagers to pursue careers in STEM, with a particular emphasis on computer science. For Irish preuniversity students, their experience of computing can vary from word processing to foundational programming, and while many schools are looking to introduce more ICT into the classroom, many students are left with a narrow view of what computer science is all about. Twenty-one students participated in the workshop and completed pre- and post-surveys, and a free word association exercise in the areas of computing and careers in computing. Analysis revealed that students’ motivation to learn about the design process, programming, inputs and outputs, and wearable technology (wearables)/Internet of Things (IoT) increased following participation. There were also increases in confidence in inputs and outputs and wearables/IoT following participation, as well as changes in the computing word associations, with students associating computing more with computer programming terms rather than general terms such as the Internet. The findings suggest that the combination of a hackathon event and a model for 21st century learning can be effective in motivating and increasing the self-efficacy of preuniversity teenagers in a number of emerging technological contexts such as IoT and wearables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a graduate course project on computer vision. The aim of the project is to detect and recognize traffic signs in video sequences recorded by an on-board vehicle camera. This is a demanding problem, given that traffic sign recognition is one of the most challenging problems for driving assistance systems. Equally, it is motivating for the students given that it is a real-life problem. Furthermore, it gives them the opportunity to appreciate the difficulty of real-world vision problems and to assess the extent to which this problem can be solved by modern computer vision and pattern classification techniques taught in the classroom. The learning objectives of the course are introduced, as are the constraints imposed on its design, such as the diversity of students' background and the amount of time they and their instructors dedicate to the course. The paper also describes the course contents, schedule, and how the project-based learning approach is applied. The outcomes of the course are discussed, including both the students' marks and their personal feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a scaffolded concept mapping strategy, which considers a student's (high or low) prior knowledge, and provides flexible learning aids (scaffolding and fading) for reading and drawing a concept map. The goal is that the whole class should progress in synchronized fashion through this strategy, with each student achieving meaningful learning. The scaffolding is tailored to the student's needs, with various levels of support. The increasing demand for scaffolding, and its constant evolution, means that software aids are needed. The authors adopted a systematic instructional design, with associated software, to create a learning environment that supports the execution of the strategy. The paper also investigates whether this strategy improved student learning for 54 undergraduates in a database management system course. The results indicate that the students who used the strategy had better learning achievements than those who only experienced traditional lectures. Moreover, the implementation of the strategy received positive student feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of any robotic system requires input from engineers from a variety of technical fields. This paper describes a project-based module, Biologically-Inspired Robotics, that is offered to Electronics and Computer Science students at the University of Southampton, U.K. The overall objective of the module is for student groups to investigate the interface between robotics and biology and develop a system (either hardware or software) to illustrate biological principles. This paper discusses the details of the implementation and delivery of the module, together with evaluation feedback. A number of the robotic systems developed by project groups are presented in order to illustrate the diversity and quality of the systems that have been developed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the integration of robotics education into an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. The proposed approach delivers mobile robotics as well as covering the closely related field of Computer Vision and is directly linked to the research conducted at the authors' institution. The paper describes the most relevant details of the module content and assessment strategy, paying particular attention to the practical sessions using Rovio mobile robots. The specific choices are discussed that were made with regard to the mobile platform, software libraries, and lab environment. The paper also presents a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of student results, including the correlation between student engagement and performance, and discusses the outcomes of this experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on work undertaken within a pilot study concerned with the design, development, and evaluation of online computer science training courses. Drawing on recent developments in e-learning technology, these courses were structured around the principles of a learner-oriented approach for use with adult learners. The paper describes a methodological framework for the evaluation of three main educational issues involved in the learning process of Web-based computer science training courses, and analyzes the results of this study with the aim of providing an improved learning design, and environment, for these courses. The findings highlight a number of potential barriers to learning and indicate the failed indicators that need to be improved in order to enhance effective performance. The authors give their views both on ways to improve the proposed learning environment and on the need for an optimal balance between asynchronous and synchronous activities, enhanced collaboration, and interactions among adult learners and e-tutors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing need for an effective method of teaching bioinformatics. Increased progress and availability of computer-based tools for educating students have led to the implementation of a computer-based system for teaching bioinformatics as described in this paper. Bioinformatics is a recent, hybrid field of study combining elements of biology, statistics, and computer science. This paper describes the implementation of a system called Bioinformatics Foundational Learning Objects Workbench (BioFLOW), that is intended to be used by instructors to educate their students in bioinformatics principles at a variety of grade levels. BioFLOW functions by dividing topics in bioinformatics into modules. These modules cover a wide variety of topics and may be inserted into different courses in bioinformatics-related fields, providing students with a basic understanding of bioinformatics if they choose to pursue it as a field of advanced study. BioFLOW also incorporates a method for assessing the performance of the modules and the students. Assessment includes evaluation of students' learning styles and their performance on quizzes and is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the modules. Utilized together, these tools can be used to refine the content of the teaching modules and thus provide an effective system for educating students in bioinformatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper employs the automatic scoring of short essays as a novel way to determine pre-service teachers’ knowledge of and attitudes toward computational thinking (CT) from their written reflections. Implications about designing CT courses for pre-service teachers are discussed. Background: CT is an essential 21st-century competency that supports the development of problem-solving skills. Inspired by computing science problem-solving practices, CT should transcend disciplines, but few universities or colleges include CT courses or CT content in their core courses. It is also difficult to know what pre-service teachers think about CT and their role in promoting it. Research Questions: Do pre-service teachers’ coding reflections reveal any important information about their knowledge of, skills in, and attitudes toward CT? Methodology: Traditional qualitative techniques based on human raters are impractical in analyzing hundreds of essays. Topic modeling, an unsupervised machine learning modeling technique, was employed to extract topical features from participants’ reflections. In one section of an undergraduate Introduction to Educational Technology course offered at a large university in Western Canada, n = 139 pre-service teachers wrote a short reflection on their experience following a 20 h Accelerated Intro to Computer Science Code.org course. Topics were identified by analyzing contextual trends in participants’ written reflections. Findings: Results showed that pre-service teachers’ reflections included CT concepts, practices, and perspectives. Specifically, participants connected the coding activity to prior knowledge and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardware-based courses in computer science studies require much effort from both students and teachers. The most important part of students' learning is attending in person and actively working on laboratory exercises on hardware equipment. This paper deals with a specific group of students, those who are marginalized by not being able to regularly attend lessons and perform the laboratory exercises. This group of “busy students” includes older students, and those who travel, are employed or are parents. In particular it describes how such students achieved impressive results in a hardware-based course by using Open Educational Resources (OER). These facilitated students' learning process and gave busy students the opportunity to organize their learning time so as to work on the hardware courses remotely from home when they had time and opportunity. The results of the evaluation show significant improvements, both in grade distribution and course throughput, after implementing the new Open Educational Resources approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper provides evidence that computational creativity exercises (CCEs) can increase engineering students’ learning in introductory computer science (CS1) courses. Its main contribution is its more rigorous treatment/control group research design that allows testing for causal influences of CCEs on student learning and performance. Background: Computer science (CS) courses are critical foundational courses for engineering students. CCEs that merge computational and creative thinking have been shown to increase achievement and learning of engineering and nonengineering students in CS1 courses, but previous research has used quasi- and non-experimental designs. Intended Outcomes: CCEs are intended to improve students’ learning of CS1 content and problem-solving ability by fostering computational creativity. Application Design: CCEs can improve student learning and can be used to supplement other evidence-based instructional practices. Findings: Propensity score matching was used to create equivalent treatment and control groups; results show that students in the CCE implementation section had higher scores on a CS knowledge test than students in the control section, but not higher self-efficacy for their CS knowledge. Focus group and open-ended survey questions indicated that students had mixed reactions to the CCEs, with about half the students seeing them as improving their learning, understanding, and ability to apply CS in their engineering field. Responses also reinforced the importance of fully incorporating CCEs in courses and aligning them with course topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and analyzes results of two Delphi processes that polled cybersecurity experts to rate cybersecurity topics based on importance, difficulty, and timelessness. These ratings can be used to identify core concepts–cross-cutting ideas that connect knowledge in the discipline. The first Delphi process identified core concepts that should be learned in any first course on cybersecurity. The second identified core concepts that any cybersecurity professional should know upon graduating from college. Despite the rapidly growing demand for cybersecurity professionals, it is not clear what defines foundational cybersecurity knowledge. Initial data from the Delphi processes lay a foundation for defining the core concepts of the field and, consequently, provide a common starting point to accelerate the development of rigorous cybersecurity education practices. These results provide a foundation for developing evidence-based educational cybersecurity assessment tools that will identify and measure effective methods for teaching cybersecurity. The Delphi results can also be used to inform the development of curricula, learning exercises, and other educational materials and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational thinking and creative thinking are valuable tools both within and outside of computer science (CS). The goal of the project discussed here is to increase students’ achievement in CS courses through a series of computational creativity exercises (CCEs). In this paper, the framework of CCEs is described, and the results of two separate studies on their impact on student achievement are presented. Students in introductory CS courses completed CCEs as part of those courses. Students in Study 1 came from a variety of programs, and students in Study 2 were engineering majors. A profiling approach was used to test whether the impact of the CCEs could be accounted for by differences in students’ motivated and self-regulated engagement. Overall, CCEs had positive impacts on students’ grades and knowledge test scores, and although there were differences in achievement across the profiles, the impact of the CCEs was generally consistent across profiles. The CCEs appear to be a promising way to increase student achievement in introductory CS courses. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a one-year introductory robotics course sequence focusing on computational aspects of robotics for third- and fourth-year students. The key challenges this curriculum addresses are scalability, i.e., how to teach a robotics class with a limited amount of hardware to a large audience,student assessment, i.e., how to assess the students' success on robotic design and programming assignments, and depth versus breadth, i.e., how to down-select content from the interdisciplinary field of robotics to computer science students. This is achieved by combining simulation-based laboratory assignments, which can be conducted anywhere and anytime, with compatible hardware devices that allow a seamless transition from simulation to real hardware, and a focus on performance-based assessment with an open-ended final project/competition. Content learning and retention is assessed for a subset of students who successfully went through the proposed curriculum. All class materials as well as hardware—in particular, a low-cost, highly articulated robotic arm developed for teaching advanced robotics concepts—are open-source and available online. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Due to significant technological advances and industry requirements, many universities have introduced programmable logic and hardware description languages into undergraduate engineering curricula. This has led to a number of logistical and didactical challenges, in particular for computer science students. In this paper, the integration of some programmable logic concepts into an introductory digital electronics course is presented. The proposed optional lab develops a printed circuit board that implements a programmable logic block. Another contribution is the collaborative problem-solving methodology used to achieve this goal. Surveys completed by the students, and their final grades, show that the lab has improved the quality of their education and has contributed to a successful integration of programmable logic concepts in an introductory digital electronics course. Because of its demands on students' time and effort, the lab favors the most motivated students. This suggests future research on a proposal for a lab that would be feasible within the time constraints for even the least motivated students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors conducted a qualitative interview-based study to reveal students' misconceptions about state in sequential circuits. This paper documents 16 misconceptions of state, how students' conceptions of state shift and change, and students' methodological weaknesses. These misconceptions can be used to inform and direct instruction. This study revealed a need for the development and adoption of standard terminology and a need to focus digital logic instruction upon a central concept of information encoding. In addition, these misconceptions will serve as the basis for the creation of standard assessments called concept inventories. A concept inventory will provide rigorous and quantitative metrics to assess the effectiveness of new teaching methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]