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Background and Context: Most studies about programming misconceptions are conducted at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Since the age level for starting learning programming is getting lower, there is a need for determining programming misconceptions for younger learners. Objective: Our goal is to determine programming misconceptions and their time‐resistance for programming novices at the K‐12 level using Python as a text‐based programming language. Method: We conducted research in the school settings during informatics classes among 98 fifth‐grade students in three elementary schools. We analysed the data collected from two Python tests students took immediately after programming lectures and 5 months later. Results and Conclusions: We detected seven misconceptions: (a) Assigning the expression instead of the calculated value, (b) When reassigning the variable value, assigning the sum value to the variable, (c) Using the symbolic name of the variable instead of its value, (d) Using the first (or previously) assigned variable value, (e) Datatype misconception, (f) Sequencing misconception, and (g) Swapping variable values. By shifting focus on variables and spending more time introducing variables and sequencing during teaching, the appearance of known misconceptions is minimized compared to previous findings. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Programming misconceptions are known issues since the beginning of learning programming in the early 1980sMost programming misconceptions are time resistant.Most studies about misconceptions are conducted at the undergraduate and graduate levels. What this paper adds: The goal of the study is to determine programming misconceptions for programming novices at the K‐12 level.Three more misconceptions about basic programming concepts are revealed compared to the previous findings.By shifting focus on variables and spending more time introducing variables and sequencing during teaching, the appearance of known misconceptions is minimized. Implications for practice and/or policy: Being aware of misconceptions is an important aspect of a teacher's pedagogical knowledge to foster students learning.Aiming to prevent the known misconceptions, teachers can minimize it by interventions during teaching.The educators should emphasize the underlying conceptual programming concepts rather than syntactic ones related to the programming language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Collaboration is a crucial concept in learning and has the potential to foster learning. However, the fact that collaborative groups act with a common understanding in a common task brings many difficulties. Therefore, there is a need for group regulation and guidance to support effective group regulation in collaborative learning. On the other hand, the focus should be on the effect of group regulation guidance intervention on the improvement of both individual and group performance, modes of motivational regulation strategies, and the progression of group metacognition. Objectives: In this study, group regulation guidance approaches were developed to support the collaborative learning of Computer Science university students. The developed group regulation guidance approach consists of feedback and a feedforward mechanism. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of these approaches on academic performance, group regulation performance perception, self‐, co‐, and socially shared regulation of intrinsic motivation, and group metacognition levels. Methods: The study was patterned with a quasi‐experimental design. 65 students participated in the study, and various scales were used to collect data. Data were analysed using paired sample t‐tests, analysis of covariance, and multivariate analysis of covariance. Results and Conclusion: According to the research results, academic achievement showed an increase in the experimental groups after the intervention compared with the pre‐intervention. The group in which the feedforward‐supported regulation guidance approach was used showed better learning success. In the group using the feedback‐supported regulation guidance approach, better group regulation, motivational regulation strategies, and group metacognition scores were obtained. Modes of motivational regulation strategies and group metacognition scores differed according to the experimental groups. Implications: While the results provide important clues for teachers and instructional designers, the developed approaches can be used as a framework for different fields. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Collaboration has the potential to foster learning.There are many obstacles for collaborative groups to act with a common understanding in a common task.Collaborative learning requires group regulation and guidance to support effective group regulation. What this paper adds: Academic achievement increased in the experimental groups after the intervention.Feedforward‐based group regulation guidance approach provides better learning success.Feedback‐based group regulation guidance approach provides better group regulation and metacognition.Modes of motivational regulation and group metacognition differ according to the groups. Implications for practice and/or policy: Teachers and instructional designers should not only focus on feedback‐based regulation processes, but also consider feedforward processes to ensure academic performance.Feedback and feedforward‐based regulation guidance approach can help computer science students, who gain first‐hand experiences through active participation, to establish more effective social interaction in their professional projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the increasing calls for a more skeptical analysis of web 2.0 and the empowerment of learners' voices in formulating upcoming technologies, this paper elaborates on the participatory design of a web learning environment. A total of 117 undergraduate students from two Greek Informatics Departments participated in 25 participatory design sessions, employing two needs' elicitation techniques, with the aim of envisioning a learning platform that meets their learning particularities and needs, incorporates and exploits their new technological habits, and can be harmoniously situated in their daily routine. Overall, 773 needs were elicited, proving that students had refined views about the elements that can render the next wave of e-learning applications successful. They convincingly demonstrated their web 2.0 mentality but sought for a smooth transition to the new environment, promoting an evolution rather than a revolution. The resulting set of needs demarcates a zone of expectancies where the enhancement of the learning content and the contextualization of knowledge remain top priorities with revamped opportunities, while networking, participation and collaboration complement and improve their characteristics. Our study is an example of exploiting participatory design for exposing students' thoughts and requirements from a critical design perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a synchronous text-based communication tool, referred to as Adaptive Communication Tool (ACT), which provides capabilities for adaptation and personalization. ACT supports both the free and the structured form of dialogue. The structured dialogue is implemented by two types of Scaffolding Sentence Templates (SST); i.e. sentence openers or communicative acts. The capability of adaptation is considered in the sense of making suggestions for the supported form of dialogue and SST type and providing the most meaningful and complete set of SST with respect to the learning outcomes addressed by the collaborative learning activity and the model of collaboration followed by the group members. Also, ACT enables learners to have control on the adaptation by selecting the form of dialogue and the SST type they prefer to use and enriching the provided SST set with their own ones in order to cover their communication needs. The results from the formative evaluation of the tool showed that (i) the proposed dialogue form, SST type and the provided set of SST cover students' communication needs, (ii) the capability of personalizing the communication by selecting the desired communication means as well as by enriching the provided SST set satisfied students, and (iii) students used adequately both types of SST resulting into on-task and coherent dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior knowledge is often argued to be an important determinant in hypermedia learning, and may be thought of as including two important elements: domain expertise and system expertise. However, there has been a lack of research considering these issues together. In an attempt to address this shortcoming, this paper presents a study that examines how domain expertise and system expertise influence students' learning performance in, and perceptions of, a hypermedia system. The results indicate that participants with lower domain knowledge show a greater improvement in their learning performance than those with higher domain knowledge. Furthermore, those who enjoy using the Web more are likely to have positive perceptions of non-linear interaction. Discussions on how to accommodate the different needs of students with varying levels of prior knowledge are provided based on the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This papers describes an exploratory study into the early phase of getting to know end-user software during which users make use of a variety of information resources, including the user interface/program itself, manuals, on-line help, examples provided in the manuals and other sources. In particular, how do novices make use of the worked-out examples often provided in manuals and during training? Building on earlier research on the self-explanation effect, thinking aloud data from 10 participants were analysed to see how examples were studied and how they were used during problem solving. Important effects of self-explaining comparable to findings in other domains were found in this study. For instance, those participants who self-explain with the goal to discover meaning prove to be better problem solvers than those who do not self-explain or who focus more on syntactical aspects of examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The current study investigated college students' experiences of a gamified informatics course. We surveyed 139 students aged 18–31 years (M = 20 years, SD = 1.5) enrolled in an undergraduate informatics course focused on social networking technologies. Surveys were conducted at 3 time points during the course (beginning, middle, and end). Overall, we found positive trends with respect to students' perceptions of gamification's impact on their learning, achievement, and engagement in the course material. Although students who played and identified variously with recreational games were more alike than not, we did uncover one notable difference with respect to how students' gaming frequency impacted their engagement in the course. Nongamers expressed somewhat less motivation to do well in the course than frequent gamers. For all other measures of engagement, however, nongamers appeared to be equally engaged by the gamified format of the course as gamers. There were virtually no differences between male and female students' perceptions of gamification. This study contributes new insight into the conditions under which gamification succeeds or fails in educational settings. These insights will be useful to designers and instructors of gamified learning environments as they seek to engage and support a variety of learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boolean systems still constitute most of the installed base of online public access catalogues (OPACs) in the French universities even if many studies have shown that Boolean operators are not frequently used by‘non-librarian’ users (by contrast with professional librarians). The first study examined the use of Boolean operators by French university students; In the second study, elaborated to evaluate the impact of information search expertise on this use, Boolean operators are explicitly presented and participants were explicitly invited to use them. We assumed that university students would not frequently use the operators in searching, and that even if they were explicitly invited to make use of them. Results obtained with the first study based on transaction logs analyses confirmed that French university students did not frequently use Boolean operators. The impact of information search expertise, analysed in the second study, compared three levels of expertise: Novice (university students), intermediate (future professional librarians), and expert (professional librarians). Results showed that, even if the three groups were invited to use Boolean operators, this use increased significantly with the level of information search expertise. University students, if they manage procedural functions of connectives in natural language, do not always manage the whole set of procedural functions carried by such connectives when used in the documentary language. So, the relevance of presenting explicit Boolean operators in the OPACs when users are‘non-librarians’ is questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]