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Aim/Purpose This paper presents findings on a curricular intervention aimed at integrating computer programming with reading and writing in early elementary school. The purpose of this research was to explore the relation between students' varying literacy levels and their level of success in mastering an introductory programming language. Methodology This curricular intervention study was implemented in a single school district in southeastern Virginia. Of the district's 33 elementary schools, eight schools received an external grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to introduce computer science in early elementary education. Standardized literacy test scores were correlated with internally developed, and age appropriate programming assessment scores from N = 132 second grade students. Contribution This study is the first of its kind to look at how students at varying literacy levels succeed in mastering an introductory programming language when introduced through a literacy lens. Findings The findings indicated that there was strong evidence for a weak, positive correlation between students' literacy levels, as determined by the PALS assessment, and their programming mastery, as determined by the curricular programming assessments. The positive correlation suggests that there may indeed be underlying constructs that overlap between literacy and programming. Recommendations for Practitioners Consider integrating computer programming as a foundational component of the literacy curriculum, especially in the early grades, where the two skill sets can mutually support one another. Recommendations for Researchers Additional research is necessary, using a variety of literacy and programming measures, to continue to understand the relationship between emerging literacy and emerging computer programming skills. Impact on Society Reimagining computer programming as a language has significant implications for how we teach programming in schools and how students then use programming out in the workforce. Future Research Future work will repeat this curricular intervention with younger students: the district's first grade and kindergarten classrooms. Introducing programming through the Coding as Literacy (CAL) approach even earlier in students' literacy trajectories, we believe, will allow the positive impact of programming knowledge to influence students' literacy development. In this next phase of our research agenda, we will collect pre and post literacy scores, both standardized and internally developed, to see the myriad ways that programming knowledge impacts literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim/Purpose Effective e-learning systems need to incorporate student characteristics such as learning style and knowledge level in order to provide a more personalized and adaptive learning experience. However, there is a need to investigate how and when to provide adaptivity based on student characteristics, and more importantly, to evaluate its value in learning enhancement. This study aims to bridge that gap by examining the effect of different modes of learning material adaptation and their sequences to the learning style and knowledge level of students in e-learning systems. Background E-learning systems aim to provide acceptability and interactivity between students, instructors, and learning content anytime and anywhere. However, traditional systems are typically designed for generic students irrespective of individual requirements. Successful e-learning systems usually consider student characteristics such as learning style and knowledge level to provide more personalized and adaptive student-system interaction. Methodology A controlled experiment was conducted in a learning context with 174 subjects to evaluate the learning effectiveness of adaptivity in e-learning systems. Contribution The main contributions of the paper are threefold. First, a novel adaptive approach is proposed based on a specific learning style model and knowledge level. Second, the approach is implemented in an e-learning system to teach computer security, the application domain. Third, a rigorous experimental evaluation of the learning effect of the adaptive approach is offered. Findings The results indicate that adaptation according to the combination of learning style and knowledge level produces significantly better learning gains, both in the short-term and medium-term, than adaptation according to either trait individually. Recommendations for Practitioners Practitioners should consider the combination of learning style and knowledge level when delivering and presenting learning material to their students. Recommendation for Researchers Researchers should consider sound educational models when designing adaptive e-learning systems. Also, rigorous and carful experimental design evaluations should be taken into account. Impact on Society Universities and e-learning industries can benefit from the proposed adaptive approach and the findings in designing and developing more personalized and adaptive e-learning systems. The incorporation of student characteristics, especially learning style and knowledge level, may be used to enhance learning. Future Research The experiment might be duplicated with a focus on longer-term learning gains by including more subjects and more learning resources. Also, the study might be expanded to application domains other than computer security. Moreover, other variables such as student satisfaction, motivation, and affective state might be explored to further the understanding of the effect of adaptivity on learning gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students often find that learning to program is hard. Introductory programming courses have high drop-out rates and students do not learn to program well. This paper presents experiences from three educational institutions where introductory programming courses were improved by adopting Python as the first programming language and roles of variables as an aid in understanding program behavior. As a result of these changes, students were able to write working code from the very beginning, they found programming easy and interesting, they passed exams with good grades, and drop-out rates were low. Students became interested in programming and some of them even changed their personal study plan to include more of programming and computer science. The high abstraction level and complexity of the concepts to be learned in current elementary programming courses is a serious impediment to students. Python is a simple but powerful programming language that supports both procedural and object-oriented programming. It makes short programs straightforward to write while at the same time facilitating rapid development of powerful applications. Python has been found to make programming more fun and thus attract students. Some of the common arguments against Python include concerns about using an interpreted language, the different syntax from C++ and Java, the use of whitespace to represent code blocks, and the lack of static type checking. However, these concerns have not caused any significant problems in practice, though it may take some effort to adapt to the syntax of other languages. Roles of variables are stereotyped patterns of usage of a variable. For example, in the role of a stepper, a variable is assigned a succession of values that is predictable and usually known in advance as soon as the succession starts. Roles provide students with programming knowledge in a compact form, which they can then apply in authoring and understanding programs independently of the programming language used. In a classroom experiment, explicit teaching of roles has been found to result in better programming skills. This paper also discusses the applicability of the roles to Python and notes some changes in the interpretation of individual roles required by some peculiarities of Python. In general, roles apply to Python well. However, the lack of constants in Python calls for a new role, and the use of lists in for-loops suggests a new interpretation for the stepper role. Finally, the difference between the two data structure roles, organizer and container, is smaller in Python than in other languages making their separation needless. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Methodological reviews have been used successfully to identify research trends and improve research practice in a variety of academic fields. Although there have been three methodological reviews of the emerging field of computer science education research, they lacked reliability or generalizability. Therefore, because of the capacity for a methodological review to improve practice in computer science education and because the previous methodological reviews were lacking, a large scale, reliable, and generalizable methodological review of the recent research on computer science education is reported here. Our overall research question, which has nine subquestions, involved the methodological properties of research reported in articles in major computer science education research forums from the years 2000-2005. The purpose of this methodological review is to provide a methodologically rigorous basis on which to make recommendations for the improvement of computer science education research and to promote informed dialogue about its practice. A proportional stratified random sample of 352 articles was taken from a population of 1306 computer science education articles published from 2000 to 2005. The 352 articles were coded in terms of their general characteristics, report elements, research methodology, research design, independent, dependent, and mediating/moderating variables examined, and statistical practices. A second rater coded a reliability sub-sample of 53 articles. Based on the results of this review, recommendations for improving computer science education research are given. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The rapid evolvement of the computing domain has posed challenges in attempting to bridge the gap between school and the contemporary world of computing, which is related to content, learning culture, and professional norms. We believe that the interaction of high-school students who major in computer science or software engineering with leading representatives of the computing community of practice may motivate them to pursue their studies further or pursue a career in the field. Accordingly, our program aims at exposing talented high-school students "directly by leading experts" to state-of-the-art computing research, advanced technologies, software engineering methodologies, and professional norms. The interaction between the students and the experts, who actually become role models for the students, occurs at two levels: (a) during enrichment plenary meetings, and (b) through one-to-one interaction in which students develop software projects under the apprenticeship-based supervision of professionals from the computing community of practice. In the last four years, six hundred students participated in enrichment activities; 86 of these students accomplished high-level software projects under the supervision of experts. A long-term formative evaluation of the program has been conducted regarding: (1) students' attitudes towards the "different-from-school" style of learning that characterizes the program, and (2) students' performance in developing projects. In this paper, we specifically discuss the contribution of resources that students used for various phases of the project development activity. We found that the following categories of resources were employed by the students: self-learning, mentors, bibliographic resources (the Web, professional articles, professional books), school resources (a school teacher, school learning, and materials), and other human resources (i.e., a classmate the student's age, a family member, a grown-up acquaintance). Importantly, the findings indicated that during the entire development process the students exhibited self-efficacy, since they relied more on themselves than on other resources. Interestingly, during the entire development process, the web was perceived as the most significant bibliographic resource. Specifically, regarding the need to achieve adequate acquaintance with the theoretical knowledge that was required, self-studying and the web were perceived as the most significant resources, which may imply that the mentors' guidance inspired the students' self-inquiry and self-study. However, during the problem-solving activities, students relied more on the mentors than on bibliographic resources. Based on the study findings, we concluded that professional experts who supervise students in project development may motivate them to acquire in-depth knowledge in computing, promote creativity, as well as enhance self-learning and inquiry ability. In addition, the interaction with role models may contribute to establishing professional norms. We hope that further implementation of the program, along with recruitment of more representative experts from academia and hi-tech industry, will promote a culture of learning and work befitting the dynamic world of industrial computing, thus providing the students with an entry point into the computing community of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modern information technology and computer science curricula employ a variety of graphical tools and development environments to facilitate student learning of introductory programming concepts and techniques. While the provision of interactive features and the use of visualization can enhance students' understanding and assist them in grasping fundamental ideas, the real difficulty for many students lies in making the transition from relying on the graphical features of these tools, to actually writing programming code statements in accordance with a set of plain English instructions. This article opens with a systematic review of the literature on alternative approaches to teaching object-oriented programming (OOP) to novice programmers. It then describes the rationale behind an "objects first, class user first" approach to introducing OOP, arguing for the use of interactive GUI-based visualization tools such as BlueJ as cognitive tools to allow learners to represent and manipulate their mental models or schemas. Finally, it reports on a study involving a cohort of students undertaking an introductory OOP unit in Java. The study investigated the effectiveness of: (i) the graphical features of BlueJ as a cognitive tool while performing coding tasks as part of a test; and (ii) the use of screencasts (video screen captures) of BlueJ to provide scaffolding during learning, which involves the provision of temporary support structures to assist learners in attaining the next stage or level in their development. The screencasts were used in conjunction with a series of structured exercises by providing an intermediate stepping stone to ease the transition to the writing of program code. The study found no significant effect of screencasts during the learning phase of the study, and no significant effect of BlueJ during testing. This result runs counter to theoretical predictions and consequently is important both for researchers focusing on the pedagogy associated with learning programming as well as those interested in the broader applications of animated instructional resources and cognitive tools. In the article, the authors postulate a number of reasons for the lack of significant effects to sup-port their hypotheses. Firstly, it is possible that some, or perhaps many, participants who had access to BlueJ during the testing phase did not actually use it to assist them in answering the test questions. Secondly, since the screencasts and BlueJ were intended to ease students' transition to code, the data collection was conducted immediately following the participants' initial exposure to code statements. This gave rise to the possibility that they may not have been ready to attempt the questions framed at a high level of abstraction, which accounted for a majority of the test marks. The authors had hypothesized that the most benefit in providing the screencast-based scaffolding and the use of BlueJ as a cognitive tool was likely to be gained in assisting students with writing code for English instructions at this high level of abstraction; however, at this point in the semester they may not have been adequately prepared to undertake these types of questions, which required them to interpret the high-level task requirements and decompose them into individual object and class operations that would achieve the desired outcome (object state). Further research will need to be carried out to determine whether these hypothesized reasons for the lack of an identifiable difference between conditions can be supported, whether other factors are responsible, or whether in fact neither BlueJ screencasts nor the use of BlueJ as a cognitive tool actually enhance learning. One possible approach to a follow-up study would involve using a smaller number of students, but carrying out intensive observation during the experiment in order to determine the degree to which, and ways in which, BlueJ is used.… [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The diversity and interdisciplinarity of computer science and the multiplicity of its uses in other sciences make it hard to define computer science and to prescribe how computer science should be carried out. The diversity of computer science also causes friction between computer scientists from different branches. Computer science curricula, as they stand, have been criticized for being unable to offer computer scientists proper methodological training or a deep understanding of different research traditions. At the Department of Computer Science and Statistics at the University of Joensuu we decided to include in our curriculum a course that offers our students an awareness of epistemological and methodological issues in computer science, and we wanted to design the course to be meaningful for practicing computer scientists. In this article the needs and aims of our course on the philosophy of computer science are discussed, and the structure and arrangements--the whys, whats, and hows--of that course are explained. The course, which is given entirely on-line, was designed for advanced graduate or postgraduate computer science students from two Finnish universities: the University of Joensuu and the University of Kuopio. The course has four relatively broad themes, and all those themes are tied to the students' everyday work or their own research topics. I have prepared course readings about each of those four themes. The course readings describe, in a compact and simple form, the cruces of the topics that are discussed in the course. The electronic version of the course readings includes hyperlinks to a large number of articles that are available on-line. The course readings are publicly available on the course home page, and they are licensed under the creative commons license. The first theme in the course is centered around a fundamental question--What is computer science? Students are introduced to the disciplinary history of computer science, to a number of characterizations of computer science made by the pioneers of the discipline, and to some methodological and epistemological viewpoints on computer science. The second theme is centered around the question--What is science? Students are introduced to, for instance, the concepts of pure and applied science, "hard" and "soft" sciences, the aims of science, the scientific method, scientific reasoning, the formation of scientific concepts and theories, and the Science Wars. The third theme concerns the division of computer science into its theoretical, engineering, and empirical traditions. The lecture notes introduce the students to descriptions of computer science that emphasize the mathematical tradition over other traditions and to descriptions that emphasize engineering or empirical traditions. The fourth theme is the philosophy of science. Throughout the course terminology of the philosophy of science is used, and the students are introduced to a number of central issues in the philosophy of science, to some of the most notable schools in the philosophy of science, and to some critical views of science. This course is aimed at providing a broad understanding of the different traditions of computer science, of the methodological differences between the branches of computer science, of the strengths and limitations of the different traditions in computer science, and of how the philosophy of science can be of help to computer scientists. In the course, critical reading and well-argumented writing are encouraged. The students learn that there are many problems that do not have clear-cut answers; they learn that there are many open problems where multiple incompatible, yet credible viewpoints can be defended. The students also learn to articulate their own positions, to defend those positions, to comment and criticize other positions, and to reflect and rethink their positions according to criticism. The students also get the chance to think about the intellectual foundations of their own work and their own research studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Teachers at universities are facing an increasing disparity in students' prior IT knowledge and, at the same time, experience a growing disengagement of the students with regard to involvement in study activities. As computer science teachers in a joint programme in computer science and business administration, we made a number of similar observations. We also noted increasing difficulties with mathematics and see a growing number of students with previous knowledge in computer science, while others have little or no expertise in this area. These observations cause problems and present a major challenge for teachers. To get a better understanding and as a prerequisite for reforming the programme we posed four research questions: What are the students' motives and expectations with regard to the chosen study programme? To what extent are the students engaged in non-academic work activities? What prior knowledge do the students have about IT and computer science? What off campus access do the students have to IT facilities? Our findings provide a number of interesting indications. The results regarding motives and expectations suggest that there ought to be a good basis for the students to improve their efforts in computer science. However, as the majority does not know what kind of work to carry out in the future, better information about the programme and relevant jobs should be provided. Concerning the students' disengagement and its possible relation to their external workload, no conclusions can be drawn and this issue has to be researched further. The same is true about the students' expertise in mathematics. The students' previous knowledge seems to be so comprehensive that it should be considered in the teaching and inform the whole curriculum design. As there are still a substantial number of students who arrive at the programme with no previous knowledge, it is however necessary to design a syllabus and organise the course programme to accommodate... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]