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This paper describes and evaluates aspects of a professional development programme for existing CS teachers in secondary schools (PLAN C) which was designed to support teachers at a time of substantial curricular change. The paper’s particular focus is on the formation of a teacher professional development network across several hundred teachers and a wide geographical area. Evidence from a series of observations and teacher surveys over a two-year period is analysed with respect to the project’s programme theory in order to illustrate not only whether it worked as intended, by why. Results indicate that the PLAN C design has been successful in increasing teachers’ professional confidence and appears to have catalysed powerful change in attitudes to learning. Presentation of challenging pedagogical content knowledge and conceptual frameworks, high-quality teacher-led professional dialogue, along with the space for reflection and classroom trials, triggered examination of the teachers’ own current ...

The challenge of teaching programming in higher education is complicated by problems associated with large class teaching, a prevalent situation in many developing countries. This paper reports on an investigation into the use of a blended learning approach to teaching and learning of programming in a class of more than 200 students. A course and learning environment was designed by integrating constructivist learning models of Constructive Alignment, Conversational Framework and the Three-Stage Learning Model. Design science research is used for the course redesign and development of the learning environment, and action research is integrated to undertake participatory evaluation of the intervention. The action research involved the Students’ Approach to Learning survey, a comparative analysis of students’ performance, and qualitative data analysis of data gathered from various sources. The paper makes a theoretical contribution in presenting a design of a blended learning solution for large class teachi...

This paper examines students' pre-college experience with computers. It finds significant gender differences in how students develop interest in computers; exposure to computers at home; availability of computers in high schools; and high-school preparations for college study in a computing field. The paper has a number of implications to improve the digital divide for women. It is based on 150 in-depth interviews of female and male undergraduate students, members of five major ethnic/racial groups (White, Afro-American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American) from seven institutions in the USA.

Reversing is the notion of thinking or working in reverse. Computer science textbooks and tutors recognize it primarily in the form of recursion. However, recursion is only one form of reversing. Reversing appears in the computer science curriculum in many other forms, at various intellectual levels, in a variety of fundamental courses. As such, it is too important a notion to be left unexplored. In this paper we discuss reversing in the context of two theoretical frameworks – as a fundamental idea in computer science, in the context of Schwill's model of fundamental ideas, and as a powerful problem solving means, in the context of Schoenfeld's cognitive model of problem solving. We recognize seven different forms of reversing, and demonstrate the essential role of each in algorithm or proof design. Our focus in the paper is conceptual, yet we briefly note our initial experimental experience, with student difficulties in both the invocation and utilization of reversing. We then discuss cognitive aspects o...

In educational research, investigators in one field are often ignorant of similar research in other fields. Physics education in particular has undergone dramatic reforms in recent years, all based on insights gained from conducting educational research. Often, pedagogical methods resulting from research in one field can be revised and transferred to another. This paper demonstrates that many methods used in physics and other science programmes Throughout this paper, programme will refer to the curricular concept and program will refer to computer programs. can be adapted to teaching computer science. The author has pursued action research in computer science and implemented ideas from science education, especially from physics education, in teaching computer science classes at a small religious secondary school in the southwestern United States. This paper presents ideas and teaching strategies with the hope of building bridges between computer science educa...

This paper examines the needs of students who, in the past, may have chosen to major in computer science or some other aspect of information technology as a way of achieving the goal of finding a job in the computer graphics field. The growth in computer graphics has lead to increased job opportunities in the industry. However, these jobs require fluency in both art and computing that an individual course or even a sequence of several courses cannot provide. In the past, there has been discussion of curricula for isolated graphics courses as part of a BS/CS degree, but industry demands more preparation than what one or two courses can deliver. This paper surveys and compares the two extant Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Graphics with the intent of encouraging dialog on the possibility of a four-year curriculum supporting this discipline.

The foundation courses in computer science pose particular challenges for teacher and learner alike. This paper describes some of these challenges and how we have designed problem-based learning (PBL) courses to address them. We discuss the particular problems we were keen to overcome: the purely technical focus of many courses; the problems of individual learning and the need to establish foundations in a range of areas which are important for computer science graduates. We then outline our course design, showing how we have created problem-based learning courses. The paper reports our evaluation of the approach. This has two parts: assessment of a trial, with a three-year longitudinal follow-up of the students; reports of student learning improve-ment after we had become experienced in full implementation of PBL. We conclude with a summary of our experience over three years of PBL teaching and discuss some of the pragmatic issues around introducing the radical change in teaching, maintaining staff suppo...

Educators make consequential curricular decisions, often with little support, particularly as it relates to equity and how to support all students. This paper investigates the use of a rubric to su...

Overlaying Computer Science (CS) courses on top of inequitable schooling systems will not move us toward “CS for All.” This paper prioritizes the perspectives of minoritized students enrolled in hi...

Through a cross‐disciplinary approach, two researchers solved the problem of poorly written term papers in the computer science curriculum. Using software engineering techniques, students produced focused, well‐organized, well‐formatted papers, some of publishable quality. The three‐step assignment taught time and research management, organization, and accepted formatting style. The researchers developed supplemental materials to help students create and then assess their work. Any Computer Science teacher at any university level can use the material if a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program exists or if the instructor has sufficient rhetorical skills.

In this theory paper, we explore the concept of translanguaging from bilingual education, and its implications for teaching and learning programming and computing in especially computer science (CS...

Subgoal labeled worked examples have been extensively researched, but the research has been reported piecemeal. This paper aggregates data from three studies, including data previously unreported, ...

Background and Context: in this paper, we argue that integrating Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) into K-12 computing education can present learners with opportunities to develop human-cent...

In this paper, we study the relationship between the use of “crib sheets” or “cheat sheets” and performance on in-class exams. Our extensive survey of the existing literature shows that it is not decisive on the questions of when or whether crib sheets actually help students to either perform better on an exam or better learn the material. We report on our own detailed analysis for a body of crib sheets created for the final exam in a junior-level Data Structures and Algorithms course. We wanted to determine whether there is any feature of the crib sheets that correlates to good exam scores. Exam performance was compared against a number of potential indicators for quality in a crib sheet. We have found that students performed significantly better on questions at the comprehension level of Bloom’s taxonomy when their crib sheet contained good information on the topic, while performance on questions at higher levels of the taxonomy did not show correlation to crib sheet contents. We have also seen that stu...

To support teachers to implement Computer Science curricula into classrooms from the very first year of school, teachers, schools and organisations seek quality curriculum resources to support implementation and teacher professional development. Until now, many Computer Science resources and outreach initiatives have targeted K-12 school-age children, with the intention to engage children and increase interest, rather than to formally teach concepts and skills. What is the educational quality of existing Computer Science resources and to what extent are they suitable for classroom learning and teaching? In this paper, an assessment framework is presented to evaluate the quality of online Computer Science resources. Further, a semi-systematic review of available online Computer Science resources was conducted to evaluate resources available for classroom learning and teaching and to identify gaps in resource availability, using the Australian curriculum as a case study analysis. The findings reveal a predo...

Hundreds of articles have been published on the topics of teaching and learning recursion, yet fewer than 50 of them have published research results. This article surveys the computing education research literature and presents findings on challenges students encounter in learning recursion, mental models students develop as they learn recursion, and best practices in introducing recursion. Effective strategies for introducing the topic include using different contexts such as recurrence relations, programming examples, fractal images, and a description of how recursive methods are processed using a call stack. Several studies compared the efficacy of introducing iteration before recursion and vice versa. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research into how students learn and understand recursion, including a look at the possible impact of instructor attitude and newer pedagogies.

To design an effective computer science curriculum, educators require a systematic method of classifying the difficulty level of learning activities and assessment tasks. This is important for curriculum design and implementation and for communication between educators. Different educators must be able to use the method consistently, so that classified activities and assessments are comparable across the subjects of a degree, and, ideally, comparable across institutions. One widespread approach to supporting this is to write learning objects in terms of Bloom's Taxonomy. This, or other such classifications, is likely to be more effective if educators can use them consistently, in the way experts would use them. To this end, we present the design and evaluation of our online interactive web-based tutorial system, which can be configured and used to offer training in different classification schemes. We report on results from three evaluations. First, 17 computer science educators complete a tutorial on using Bloom's Taxonomy to classify programming examination questions. Second, 20 computer science educators complete a Neo-Piagetian tutorial. Third evaluation was a comparison of inter-rater reliability scores of computer science educators classifying programming questions using Bloom's Taxonomy, before and after taking our tutorial. Based on the results from these evaluations, we discuss the effectiveness of our tutorial system design for teaching computer science educators how to systematically and consistently classify programming examination questions. We also discuss the suitability of Bloom's Taxonomy and Neo-Piagetian theory for achieving this goal. The Bloom's and Neo-Piagetian tutorials are made available as a community resource. The contributions of this paper are the following: the tutorial system for learning classification schemes for the purpose of coding the difficulty of computing learning materials; its evaluation; new insights into the consistency that computing educators can achieve using Bloom; and first insights into the use of Neo-Piagetian theory by a group of classifiers. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

This paper reports on a qualitative study that examined how pair programming shapes the experience of secondary school girls taking IT as a subject, with respect to their enjoyment of programming and the subject itself. The study involved six Grade 11 girls who were doing solo programming in Grade 10 and pair programming in their following Grade. The results showed that the girls enjoyed the subject more when programming in pairs due to improved comprehension of the task. They especially enjoyed the socialization and communication brought about by pair programming. The assistance, support, motivation, focus and encouragement they received from partners when stuck or while fixing errors made the programming experience more enjoyable for them. The increased enjoyment brought about by pair programming resulted in the perception of greater learning in the subject IT and also to greater interest in it. It also led to greater persistence in dealing with problems. Pair programming should be implemented right fro...

This paper analyses the teaching and learning of computing in a Web-conferencing environment. A discourse analysis of three introductory programming learning episodes is presented to demonstrate issues and effects that arise when teaching computing using such an approach. The subject of discussion, the interactive nature of discussion and any actions performed by both the teacher and students were coded in order to determine how the approach to teaching impacted upon discourse. Student participation increased under student-centred approaches as the responsibility for the direction of curriculum-based discussion was devolved from the teacher to the students. However, teacher-led approaches incurred less of a collaborative overhead relating to coordinating activity between people and operating the technology. The data analysed and the approach adopted represent a subset of outputs from a PhD thesis investigating the teaching and learning of computer programming using Web-conferencing.

The paper describes an empirical study with the aim of producing insights about how students experience programming and software engineering. The research aims to investigate the students’ world, ...

Computer science education should not be based on short-term developments but on content that is observable in multiple domains of computer science, may be taught at every intellectual level, will be relevant in the longer term, and is related to everyday language and/or thinking. Recently, a catalogue of central concepts for computer science education such as algorithm, computer, and data has been empirically determined. This paper now concentrates on central processes relevant for computer science education. Experts of computer science rated 44 general-education processes regarding four criteria. By using a cluster analysis approach the following central processes for computer science education have been identified: problem solving and problem posing, analyzing, generalizing, finding relationships, classifying, and investigating.

A key challenge of effective teaching is assessing and monitoring the extent to which students have assimilated the material they were taught. Concept mapping is a methodology designed to model what students have learned. In effect, it seeks to produce graphical representations (called concept maps) of the concepts that are important to a given domain and how they are related, according to the students. In recent decades various methods have emerged to evaluate concept maps, each measuring different features of concept maps. New approaches are still being developed. Few guidelines are available regarding the method to choose for a given application. This paper is a literature review that consists of two parts. The first is a review of the many automated and manual techniques of concept map analysis. The second is a critical and reflective commentary on these techniques.

Computer science is possibly one of the few remaining disciplines almost entirely dominated by men, especially university staff and in the hi-tech industries. This phenomenon prevails throughout the western world; in Israel it starts in high school, where only 30% of students who choose to take computer science as an elective are women, and continues in university and college, where usually less than 30% of the entire computer science student population is female. In this paper we present data describing women taking the undergraduate computer science program at the Open University of Israel. Covering a period of 10 years, we have examined the enrollment and results of thousands of students on 20 undergraduate computer science courses. An attempt has been made to identify whether there is a specific stage in the undergraduate program which is more difficult for women to pass. The good news is that within the Open University of Israel out of the entire population of computer science students the percentage...

Non-determinism is one of the most important, yet abstract, recurring concepts of Computer Science. It plays an important role in Computer Science areas such as formal language theory, computability theory, distributed computing, and operating systems. We conducted a series of studies on the perception of non-determinism. In the current research, we studied and analyzed undergraduate Computer Science students' solutions to assignments in a course on automata and formal languages. Our findings shed some light on students' perceptions of non-determinism, their tendency to use non-determinism, and the characteristics of their non-deterministic solutions. This paper describes the current research and its results, and suggests several teaching applications.

Many universities have experienced an increase in the intake of students and at the same time cuts in the budgets for teaching. Many teachers have discovered, for a number of reasons, that they have to adjust their teaching or even a course with short notice. These facts pose a challenge to the teachers' agility in adapting to changes—and in doing it in a cost-efficient way. We propose eXtreme Teaching as a framework that allows teachers to focus on experimenting with and improving their teaching techniques without compromising quality. The framework and the associated practices provide quick, accurate feedback that teachers can act on. eXtreme Teaching will allow better student learning, stronger relationships with the students, increased interaction and development of the staff involved, less risk—and probably happier staff members. In this paper, we will describe the eXtreme Teaching framework and discuss and motivate its background.

An introductory CS1 course presents problems for educators and students due to students' diverse background in programming knowledge and exposure. Students who enroll in CS1 also have different expectations and motivations. Prompted by the curricular guidelines for undergraduate programmes in computer science released in 2001 by the ACM/IEEE, and driven by a departmental project to reinvent the undergraduate computer science and computer engineering curricula at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, we are currently implementing a series of changes which will improve our introductory courses. One key component of our project is an online placement examination tied to the cognitive domain that assesses student knowledge and intellectual skills. Our placement test is also integrated into a comprehensive educational research design containing a pre- and posttest framework for assessing student learning and providing valuable feedback for needed instructional revisions. In this paper, we focus on the design and...

This paper describes an empirical study that investigated the knowledge that Computer Science students have about the extent of their own previous learning. The study compared self-generated estimates of performance with actual performance on a data structures quiz taken by undergraduate students in courses requiring data structures as a prerequisite. The study was contextualized and grounded within a research paradigm in Psychology called calibration of knowledge that suggests that self-knowledge across a range of disciplines is highly unreliable. Such self-knowledge is important because of its role in meta-cognition, particularly in cognitive self-regulation and monitoring, as well as in the credence that instructors give to student self-reports. Our results indicated that Computer Science student self-estimates are highly correlated with performance, more so for estimates provided after the performance than before. This high level of calibration, however, was likely the result of a number of conditions...

For beginning programmers, inadequate problem solving and planning skills are among the most salient of their weaknesses. In this paper, we test the efficacy of natural language tutoring to teach and scaffold acquisition of these skills. We describe ProPL (Pro-PELL), a dialogue-based intelligent tutoring system that elicits goal decompositions and program plans from students in natural language. The system uses a variety of tutoring tactics that leverage students' intuitive understandings of the problem, how it might be solved, and the underlying concepts of programming. We report the results of a small-scale evaluation comparing students who used ProPL with a control group who read the same content. Our primary findings are that students who received tutoring from ProPL seem to have developed an improved ability to solve the composition problem and displayed behaviors that suggest they were able to think at greater levels of abstraction than students in the read-only group.

Constructing a data model for a problem area requires identifying and formulating some symbolic representation of the concepts involved, their characteristics, and the relationships between them. Taking a socio-cultural perspective on learning, analysis of classroom dialog is used to identify cognitive challenges met by novice students of data modelling. This paper shows how Vygotskyan theory of concept building sheds light on some psycholinguistic aspects of data modelling. The high-school students in the study displayed a lack of what will be called metalinguistic consciousness. Many of their problems were related to the conceptualisation process of forming entities and assigning appropriate labels to them. In teaching data modelling, there seems to be a need to focus more explicitly on the four-way relationship between (1) concrete or abstract objects of the world, (2) the terms denoting these objects, (3) the related subjective meaning and (4) the symbolic representation in a data model.

Roles of variables is a new concept that captures tacit expert knowledge in a form that can be taught in introductory programming courses. A role describes some stereotypic use of variables, and only ten roles are needed to cover 99% of all variables in novice-level programs. This paper presents the results of an experiment where roles were introduced to novices learning Pascal programming. Students were divided into three groups that were instructed differently: in the traditional way with no treatment of roles; using roles throughout the course; and using a role-based program animator in addition to using roles in teaching. The results show that students are not only able to understand the role concept and to apply it in new situations but—more importantly—that roles provide students a new conceptual framework that enables them to mentally process program information in a way demonstrating good programming skills. Moreover, the use of the animator seems to foster the adoption of role knowledge.

The paper presents a study of novice difficulties with range conceptions in loop design. CS2 students were asked to solve four related enumeration tasks, which required various loop boundary specifications. The student solutions varied considerably in conciseness and efficiency. The solution diversity reveals significant differences in range partitioning insights. The solutions are categorized, analyzed, and discussed. The categorization and analysis illuminate a novel perspective of novices' lack of range conceptions in loop design. A set of guidelines is offered for addressing this deficiency, by underlining the mathematical and design links between range ends, range partitioning, and loop boundary specifications.

The TeachScheme! Project aims to reform three aspects of introductory programming courses in secondary schools. First, we use a design method that asks students to develop programs in a stepwise fashion such that each step produces a well-specified intermediate product. Second, we use an entire series of sublanguages, not just one. Each element of the series introduce students to specific linguistic mechanisms and thus represents a cognitive development stage in the learning process. The third reform element is the use of a program development environment that was specifically developed for beginners. This paper presents the project’s premises, the details of its innovations, and a preliminary experience report.

In this paper we review the literature relating to the psychological/educational study of programming. We identify general trends comparing novice and expert programmers, programming knowledge and strategies, program generation and comprehension, and object-oriented versus procedural programming. (We do not cover research relating specifically to other programming styles.) The main focus of the review is on novice programming and topics relating to novice teaching and learning. Various problems experienced by novices are identified, including issues relating to basic program design, to algorithmic complexity in certain language features, to the “fragility” of novice knowledge, and so on. We summarise this material and suggest some practical implications for teachers. We suggest that a key issue that emerges is the distinction between effective and ineffective novices. What characterises effective novices? Is it possible to identify the specific deficits of ineffective novices and help them to become effec...

Students in two offerings of a software engineering course were asked to write opinion papers regarding the use of Extreme Programming (XP) in an undergraduate computer science curriculum. The majority opposed the use of XP as the preferred life-cycle model for the project in that course, but they did support introducing some of the practices of XP in selected courses. They felt that unit testing and coding standards should become part of the introductory programming courses, but other practices should be deferred to specific project-oriented courses, or not introduced at all. Two pilot studies provided additional insights that are consistent with the students' opinions.

This paper describes our experiences in leading Lumberjack Summer Camp, a ten-week undergraduate research experience in compiler-based optimization techniques for functional programs, held during the summer of 2000. Like many undergraduate research experiences, Lumberjack Summer Camp was designed to provide an opportunity for students and faculty to work closely together toward a common research goal. But Lumberjack Summer Camp was designed around an additional aim as well: to bring together a critical mass of researchers from two small liberal arts colleges to pursue individual research projects situated within one overarching, collaborative, cutting-edge research endeavor. We explore some important consequences of this design choice, ultimately ofiering Lumberjack Summer Camp as an unusual, but very workable, model for undergraduate research experiences.

We are developing a course in concurrency for high school students. The course is being developed in phases of refinement on the basis of feedback received from teachers and students. We have found persistent difficulties that students have in understanding fundamental concepts, which has led us to investigate their preconceptions of concurrency. This paper describes the results of this investigation. The work is anchored in constructivism, which stresses the importance of prior knowledge upon which new knowledge is built. The students were asked to solve concurrency problems, both prior to the course and after learning just the basics of the subject. Analysis of solutions reveals that students: (a) find that solving a problem on the order of actions is more natural than the critical section problem, (b) are divided in their preference for centralized and decentralized solutions, (c) employ inappropriate heuristics, (d) invent computational models as they work, (e) attribute parallelism where it does not ...

Research has revealed a significant gap between the thinking patterns and software design habits of students or recent computer science university graduates and those of expert software developers.There may be several causes for this gap, one of which is undoubtedly the fact that throughout their studies students are mostly asked to write software programs of relatively lim-ited scope, and are not usually required to work as part of a team constructing a complex program.In the present paper we will describe a study unit intended to be taught as part of a high school computer science curriculum, which emphasizes the software system aspects. In a study that accompanied the development and actual teaching of the unit, we checked, among other things, whether the students acquired skills for developing a complex software system.

This paper reports the results of studying the use of peer learning in the introductory computer science curriculum. The project involves educators from a variety of institutions who participated in two summer workshops and either introduced or continued their use of peer learning at their institutions as part of this project. The results of the collective work include much experience with different types of peer learning in different settings. Overall, the results indicate that peer learning is a valuable technique that should be used as one pedagogical approach in teaching the introductory computer science curriculum.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has convened the yearly Conference on Computer Science Education in the Secondary Schools since 1995 to discuss and carry out a systematic study of issues facing computer science education in the state of New Jersey. The goal is to address the implications of these curricular issues, identify the obstacles to classroom implementation, and to make suggestions for possible solutions. The outcome of these conferences is a clear indication that a seamless articulation between high-school programs and those at university level is of critical importance for secondary school educators and could serve as the foundation for implementing a computer science curriculum in the schools. This paper reviews the current status of secondary schools computer science education in the state of New Jersey and discusses curriculum guidelines formulated by conference participants, themselves classroom teachers. This work, along with previous curriculum re commendations reported in the li...

We teach students to become researchers through a kind of apprenticeship. Experienced researchers take graduate students under their wing and tutor them individually on how to do research: a slow and somewhat erratic procedure. This article describes a course that is designed to accelerate the process by imparting professional research skills. It has been taught for three years to incoming graduate students, and includes seminars by experienced researchers, presentations by students in the class, and lectures and discussions on topics that relate to particular research skills. Strong emphasis is placed on the critical analysis and evaluation of research ideas, and students practice by writing reviews, presenting papers, and constructing a thesis proposal.

This paper describes a research project that was designed to provide a group of bright undergraduate students with a meaningful research experience that would encourage and motivate them to attend graduate school for further education and research. The project illustrated basic research techniques and the nature of the job of a researcher to undergraduates who had had limited or no opportunities for research. The students were involved in all phases of the project to ensure that they would gain the confidence needed to do research on their own. In this project the students were given an opportunity to do research that involved parallel processing.

Independent of the content and placement of the discrete mathematics course in the computer science curriculum, a common goal is to improve the students’ ability to read and communicate mathematical or technical material. This paper describes a teaching format for the discrete mathematics course that fosters this goal. Instead of lecturing, the instructor responds to questions and asks questions over material the students have read. In periodic problem sessions, student groups polish and present problem solutions for the rest of the class to critique. This approach not only improves the technical reading and communication skills of the students, but involves students more actively in the total learning process.

Students drop out of university courses for a multitude of reasons. Whatever the cause, the costs of an unsuccessful attempt to complete a course are significant to student and university alike. This paper examines student attrition in computer science classes with the hope of identifying common causes and ultimately reducing the number of students dropping computer science courses. Survey data were analyzed to determine if reasons for dropping differed for various groupings of students including undergraduate/graduate, male/female, computer science major/non‐major, and service/non‐service courses.

I am very pleased to be introducing this Special Issue on pedagogic patterns, which has been an interest of mine for over 10 years. This issue is formed of six papers that represent a spectrum of i...

When a liberal arts college decides to include computer science as one of its academic disciplines, a number of questions arise. What is an appropriate curriculum? What sort of laboratory support does this new discipline need? How does a small liberal arts school attract, retain, and evaluate faculty in this area? Do computer science faculty become a separate department or remain joined with mathematics or some other discipline? In short, what must be done to put computer science on equal footing with mathematics and other scientific disciplines? This paper addresses these questions.

I have discovered that, by giving my students quizzes at the end of each class, I can noticeably improve their learning without having to improve my teaching. In this paper, I want to discuss how this “discovery” might be used by others, how it might be studied scientifically, and how it might be developed into a well engineered teaching tool. I want to suggest that developing simple, well engineered, educational tools might be a worthwhile goal for those who want to try to improve computer science education.