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Aiming to collect various concepts, approaches, and strategies for improving computer science education in K-12 schools, we edited this second special issue of the "ACM TOCE" journal. Our intention was to collect a set of case studies from different countries that would describe all relevant aspects of specific implementations of Computer Science Education in K-12 schools. By this, we want to deliver well-founded arguments and rich material to the critical discussion about the state and the goals of K-12 computer science education, and also provide visions for the future of this research area. In this editorial, we explain our intention and report some details about the genesis of these special issues. Following, we give a short summary of the Darmstadt Model, which was suggested to serve as a structuring principle of the case studies. The next part of the editorial presents a short description of the five extended case studies from India, Korea, NRW/Germany, Finland, and USA that are selected to be included in this second issue. In order to give some perspectives for the future, we propose a set of open research questions of the field, partly derived from the Darmstadt Model, partly stimulated by a look on large-scale investigations like PISA.

As universities shifted to online education with the onset of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, both pedagogy and assessment patterns across disciplines underwent a change, with a shift towards collaborative digital assessments. In this context, using qualitative and quantitative methods for data collection from an assessment conducted for 55 students who worked in groups to create YouTube videos on pre-selected modules, our analysis reveals that this assessment tool had a significant impact on peer learning, motivation and group dynamics. Students were more motivated to learn and share their learning, and they could also successfully engage in recognising and addressing group dynamics, thereby cultivating more than just subject knowledge. This finding aligns with existing scholarship and the paper adds to research about pedagogy and assessment via digital education in the Indian context, which is still upcoming.

The introduction of Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) in November 2022 brought about rapid changes in the workplace and academia. Its usage ranged from student assignments to workplace targets in the engineering field. Although it has brought novel ideas to its application in various fields and task efficiency in the workplace, its perceived application varies among students, teachers, and professionals. This study employed the snowball sampling technique and interviews with eight students, eight faculty members, and eight working professionals from computer science engineering who used ChatGPT regularly. The study adopted a qualitative research design and employed the narrative data analysis technique. Researchers conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews to elicit user experiences from the recruited samples. The findings brought out six main and twelve subordinate themes regarding ChatGPT user experiences: adapt, adopt, embrace, ease, speed, engage, and automate. The inclusion criteria involved ChatGPT users from the computer science engineering domain only. Future research may focus on developing ChatGPT user policies for various fields of their applications.

Aim/Purpose: Despite playing a critical role in shaping the future, 70% of undergraduate engineers report low levels of motivation. Student disengagement and a lack of ownership of their learning are significant challenges in higher education, specifically engineering students in the computer science department. This study investigates the various causes of these problems among first-year undergraduate engineers. Background: Student disengagement has become a significant problem, especially in higher education, leading to reduced academic performance, lower graduation rates, and less satisfaction with learning. The study intends to develop approaches that encourage a more interesting and learner-motivated educational environment. Methodology: This research uses a mixed methods approach by combining quantitative data from a survey-based questionnaire with qualitative insights from focus groups to explore intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, instructional practices, and student perceptions of relevance and application of course content. The aim of this method is to make an all-inclusive exploration into undergraduate engineering students' perspectives on factors contributing to this disengagement and the need for more ownership. Contribution: Inculcating passion for engineering among learners seems demanding, with numerous educational programs struggling with issues such as a lack of interest by students and no personal investment in learning. Understanding the causes is of paramount importance. The study gives suggestions to help teachers or institutions create a more engaged and ownership-based learning environment for engineering students. Findings: The findings revealed a tangled web influencing monotonous teaching styles, limited opportunities and applications, and a perceived gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world engineering problems. It emphasized the need to implement more active learning strategies that could increase autonomy and a stronger sense of purpose in their learning journey. It also highlights the potential use of technology in promoting student engagement and ownership. Further research is needed to explore optimal implementation strategies for online simulations, interactive learning platforms, and gamification elements in the engineering curriculum. Recommendations for Practitioners: It highlights the complex interplay of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors and the need to re-look at instructional practice and emphasize faculty training to develop a more student-centered approach. It also stresses the need to look into the relevance and application of the course content. Recommendation for Researchers: More work needs to be done with a larger, more diverse sample population across multiple institutions and varied sociocultural and economic backgrounds. Impact on Society: Enhancing learners' educational experience can result in creating a passionate and competent team of engineers who can face future obstacles fearlessly and reduce the production of half-baked graduates unprepared for the profession's challenges. Future Research: Conduct long-term studies to assess the impact of active learning and technology use on student outcomes and career readiness. Investigate scaling up successful strategies across diverse engineering programs. See if promising practices work well everywhere.

Digital literacy (DL) training improves the participants' digital skills and engagements and achieves desired online benefits and opportunities. However, there remains a gap in understanding whether the acquired skills effectively translate into tangible outcomes. This study explores how digital literacy training programs (DLTPs) serve as solutions to mitigate the impact of the digital divide, particularly among marginalised rural populations. Using the corresponding fields' model, we explored the internet outcomes achieved post-training, as achieving meaningful outcomes is crucial in the digital age. In-depth interviews of 60 beneficiaries of the PMGDISHA programme, a DLTP run by the Government of India, were conducted, and thematic analysis was performed to identify the internet outcomes based on Helsper's corresponding fields (2012). The findings demonstrate that training significantly impacts digital engagement and internet outcomes across online fields. However, discrepancies in internet outcomes persist among participants, and these disparities are closely linked to participants' socio-demographic and economic characteristics. To create a more equitable digital landscape, digital inclusion initiatives must consider these elements and tailor their approaches accordingly. These findings significantly impact policymakers, managers, practitioners, trainers, and researchers in bridging the digital divide and creating a more inclusive digital society.

It is important that software testing courses at universities provide students with testing skills that are close to the skills needed by industry. To investigate if these courses do accomplish this role, this research provides comparison and empirical analysis of the topics provided by 80 software testing courses in nine countries around the world and the skills that are required by 400 software testing related job advertisements in the same investigated countries. Based on this analysis, the research provides a taxonomy of the testing topics by universities and the needed skills by industry. The main knowledge gaps between testing courses and job ads are explained in detail. The results revealed that the testing techniques with huge gap with industry are load testing, regression testing, performance testing, functional testing, penetration testing, accessibility testing, exploratory testing and compatibility testing. The gaps in other areas of testing are also specified by the research. Providing data analysis of the required testing skills by industry and comparing these skills with the topics of testing courses will help universities to modify the topics and learning outcomes of these courses to make them closer to industrial needs.

The aim of this study was to determine the predispositions of the studied groups of students to work in the IT sector. The basis for predisposition assessment was their voluntary self-assessment of certain preferences, which are related to the theory of multiple intelligences of Professor Gardner. The study was conducted on a reference group of IT sector employees, assuming that they will be the model, to which the results of the study will be related. The method used to obtain data about the students' predispositions was a test carried out in an auditorium mode or online. More than 500 students from several countries were surveyed and interesting statistical material was obtained allowing for comparison between groups. The most important result was to find a way to sort the students into groups in order from most similar in their aptitude to the market pattern to least. This made it possible to determine the boundary beyond which students could be considered selected for a job in the IT sector. Statistical hypotheses about the similarity of the student groups to the reference group were verified. The results were both positive, confirming that a large percentage of students have predispositions to work in the IT market, and less promising. The authors are convinced that the method can be applied all over the world, as they examined groups in very diverse countries, taking into account, for example, location, education system, culture or religion.

Software engineering is a core theory course offered in undergraduate engineering programmes which deals with various systematic approaches, methods, and tools that can be employed for designing, developing, testing, and maintaining quality software applications. It is one of the challenging courses for the teaching faculty. After graduation, the students are expected to practice software engineering principles and practices in their prospective projects. In order to satisfy the industrial requirement, and to create industry ready software professionals, software engineering course is offered as theory cum practical course. This article focuses on setting up an effective learning environment for learning software engineering courses. The course is blended with traditional classroom teaching methodology along with a set of pedagogical practices, active learning strategies, ICT tools for content delivery and assessment. This enhanced approach in teaching learning methodology improves student learning outcomes, which in turn helps them to adopt corporate practices more easily.

Purpose: The purpose of the case study is to investigate the perception of computer science learners at Krishna Kanta Handiqui State Open University (KKHSOU) regarding the use of gamification and to identify the challenges in implementing gamified teaching-learning processes in open and distance learning (ODL) institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The case study was carried out by observing the views of the learners on the use of gamification in distance learning and studying the participation level of computer science learners before and after the gamification environment was added to a specific topic through the learning management system (LMS). The pre-game and post-game effects on learners' participation against various factors using t-tests were also investigated in this study. Findings: The study reveals that gamification had a positive and highly significant influence on the learners' participation and engagement in the e-content provided via the LMS. The post-gamification mean score (5.62) was higher than the pre-gamification mean score (2.36), and the overall paired t-test (5.301) value was significant at the 1% level of significance. Some of the challenges faced during the study were communication with the learner, lack of technical skills of the learner, duration of study, etc. Originality/value: This study will help in understanding the perception and effect of gamification on computer science learners in ODL mode in India. The study succeeded in demonstrating that the use of gamified elements results in increased learner participation.

This report introduces a two-week workshop on web coding and environmental sustainability at a school for girls in Northeastern India. Our discussion of this teaching project reviews issues that shaped the project's development, outlines resources required for implementation, and summarizes the workshop's curriculum. High-speed Internet will soon arrive in the region of this recently recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site. We believe that the training of girls in particular could help redistribute power and resources in regions where women are often poorer, less educated, and excluded from decision-making in institutional and public contexts. Relatively few code-teaching projects have grappled with the difficulty of working in offline environments at the "edge of the Internet," and yet moving skills and knowledge into these regions before the Internet becomes widely accessible might help mitigate some of the web's worst impacts on equity and justice.

Owing to the entry of COVID-19, starting from the year 2000, India managed online education well for more than a year and a half. Now, the question is to understand whether the online mode of education is as effective as the face-to-face classes. This study intends to focus on identifying the challenges and finding the opportunities to enhance the quality of online engineering education with respect to Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) branch. A survey was conducted using a questionnaire involving the chosen 2nd year, 3rd year, and 4th year students of CSE department, Velammal College of Engineering & Technology, Madurai (VCET), who have had the experience of acquiring knowledge through both offline and online modes. The spreadsheet software was used to filter, organize as well as visualize quantitative data, and descriptive methodology was adopted for the data analysis. The result of the study will lay a scope to understand the existing gaps in online CSE education and the proposed ideas to fill the same enhancing the resources. Further, this study may play a pivotal role in making effective online CSE education at par with face-to-face classes completely possible and preferable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: With past studies indicating a lack of skill development in engineering education, there is a need for new pedagogical tools that are application and skill-oriented. Hackathons are widely accepted in the corporate world, in the engineering domain for skill development and recruitment but have not gained acceptance in mainstream engineering education. Very few studies have discussed engineering educator views regarding hackathons and their benefits. This paper intends to study engineering educators' perception of the hackathon and its benefits after participating in it. The findings could support hackathons as a pedagogical tool to develop an industry-oriented and skill-based engineering education. Design/methodology/approach: A mixed methods design was employed where initially qualitative study was conducted. Its findings were used to conduct survey of 162 engineering educators who had participated in a hackathon. A five point Likert scale was employed for data collection. Findings: The findings reveal that engineering educators who participated in the hackathon perceived hackathons to support industry-focused learning, problem-solving and new skill development. They also acknowledged its role in their professional development. The further discussion suggests that engineering educators and institutes may collaborate with industry to design and use hackathons as a teaching tool to develop industry-ready graduates. Research limitations/implications: The study was not designed to study how different aspects of hackathon lead to different benefits derived from participating in it. There is a need to study hackathons as a tool of pedagogy and assessment, focusing on how variables linked to it facilitate, moderate and hinder the learning and assessment process in participants. More in-depth studies need to be conducted to adopt the hackathon as a pedagogy and assessment tool in higher education. Practical implications: The discussion suggests that designing hackathons effectively as a tool for learning and skill development will result in skilled graduates. Engineering educators should adopt hackathons as a pedagogy for their students. Management and policymakers of engineering institutes should consider hackathons as a part of pedagogy for students besides conducting hackathons for educators for their professional development that will be investment in skills helpful at workplace. Originality/value: The notable contribution of this paper is to document perceptions of engineering educators regarding hackathons and their benefits after participating in a hackathon. The paper proposes that hackathons can be introduced in the engineering curriculum as they would offer educators a novel method of teaching and assessment and support engineering graduates in recruitment and making them industry-ready.

Due to rapid advancement of technology, engineers should have a set of engineering skills. The basic knowledge about engineering skills should be imparted during graduation. In this study, an attempt is made to assess the gap between the present course curriculum that engineering institutions are exposing their engineering students and the skills required by the industries. Views of engineering students and academicians are obtained through questionnaires and analyzed using statistical tools. The results revealed that strong analytical ability, able to adapt and learn new technology, problem-solving within stipulated period or deadlines, and work promotion are the most important factors for a successful future job performance. The study also reveals that a significant gap exists between learning skills like communication, systematic work plan, and furtherance of work done. It is also seen that the use of modern tools and knowledge up-gradation is important to acquire many required industrial skills for a successful job career and the present curriculum is not effective to impart training on these aspects.

The world has witnessed changes in teaching and learning attitudes ever since the dawn of the technological revolution. Additionally, the overwhelming propensity for technology among Indian teachers and pupils has had a great effect on the country's educational system. On this basis, a study was done to determine how much teachers and students could gain from sharing precursory e-lessons through a messaging app. The main objective of this study was to investigate how to bring each student to one level, and how to focus parallelly while teaching. First, a pre-test was administered to the experimental group and the control group. After pre-testing, the experimental group underwent the intervention procedure. The benefits of precursory e-lesson sharing combined with face-to-face training were then evaluated using a post-test. It was concluded that this study not only made information transfer easier, more interesting, and more permanent, but also created a balance in the learning levels of the majority of students.

There are many grey areas in the interpretation of academic integrity in the course on Introduction to Programming, commonly known as CS1. Copying, for example, is a method of learning, a method of cheating and a reuse method in professional practice. Many institutions in India publish the code in the lab course manual. The students are expected to practice the programs in the manual and write them in the final examination without looking at the reference code. Many institutions apportion some marks for copying the program from the manual to record books. The system thus, inherently encourages copying. The student listens to the program's explanation in the lecture, practices the same program in the lab, writes the same program in the record book and again studies the same program for the final examination conducted at the end of the semester. This process facilitates students, to some extent, to understand the concepts. However, a significant disadvantage of this system is that most students do not acquire the ability to write programs for authentic tasks. In the context of very rigid laboratory protocols that exist in CS1 courses across most of the Institutes in India, an additional lab protocol that focuses on students' integrity can potentially improve the quality of learning. This article presents a method of using technology tools to improve integrity without disturbing the existing system.

Contribution: This article details a systematic study to investigate knowledge that graduate students have about reliability and safety engineering (RSE), comparing it with industry expectations. Background: Reliability and safety have always been the main focus while developing safety-critical systems (SCS). An interview study was conducted with engineering students in India and Brazil and with experienced practitioners to investigate a perceived mismatch between education and employment on knowledge related to RSE in SCS. Research Question: How does student knowledge of RSE for SCS compare with industry expectations? What measures could be taken by institutes and universities providing computer engineering courses to better meet the expectations of industries regarding SCS? Methodology: Interviews and discussions were conducted with 21 practitioners from ten different organizations to identify what expectations they hold for the students they recruit to develop SCS, as these SCS have high reliability and safety requirements. Interviews were conducted with graduate students of various engineering disciplines to assess their knowledge of RSE for SCS. Analyses were conducted to compare industry expectations with students' knowledge. Findings: Analyses indicated most graduate students do not have the range of knowledge regarding RSE that recruiters see as essential for the development of SCS. Hence, it is paramount to rethink computing curricula--to include RSE-related topics.

The introductory programming course, commonly known as CS1 and offered as a core course in the first year in all engineering programs in India, is unique because it can address higher cognitive levels, metacognition and some aspects of the affective domain. It can provide much needed transformative experiences to students coming from a system of school education that is dominantly performance-driven. Unfortunately, the CS1 course, as practiced in almost all engineering programs, is also performance-driven because of a variety of compulsions. This paper suggests that the inclusion of a course CS0 can bring about transformative learning that can potentially make a significant difference in the quality of learning in all subsequent engineering courses. The suggested instruction design of this course takes the advantage of the unique features of a course in programming. The proposed CS0 course uses "extreme apprenticeship" and "guided discovery" methods of instruction. The effectiveness of these instruction methods was established through the use of the thematic analysis, a well-known qualitative research method, and the associated coding of transformative learning experiences and instruction components.

In this study, an innovative tool for enabling contextual teaching based on visual inputs, named Visual Stimuli‐based Teaching Aid (VISTA), was developed. This system establishes the meaning and significance of concepts that are taught in the classroom within different environmental contexts. The idea of contextual teaching has been deliberated for more than a decade now. Nevertheless, using this in a classroom with limited time and resources has several challenges. VISTA leverages the ubiquitous mobile devices to boost conventional teaching methods with contextual teaching–learning. With VISTA, contextual teaching does not require any specialized device, expensive sensors, or simulated environment. To assess the applicability of VISTA in computer science education, we gathered the responses and experiences from 42 computer science teachers teaching in various universities of India. The responses garnered indicate that contextualization through VISTA is relevant as well as interesting. In total, 86.31% of the teachers found the contextual information provided by VISTA to be significantly related to both the captured images and the concepts presented in the class. These results encourage the use of VISTA as a pedagogical tool for contextual teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CS1 courses are designed in Indian Institutions as a lecture course of three to four credits and one credit lab course. The issues related to curriculum design, instruction design, and students' learning manifest themselves as issues in the lab programs. This situation presents the lab instructor with an opportunity to understand and address the difficulty the student is facing. The difficulty could be understanding a concept, applying a concept, the amount of effort invested, and the time required by the individual to solve the problem. The student might need help to address various emotional aspects related to peer pressure, need for completion, need for acceptance by the instructor, and achievement goals. The student's difficulty is usually handled by (a) allowing the student to correct programs by looking at the working programs of their peers or class notes, (b) The teacher or peer fixes the program. The problem gets solved, and the student moves on to the next program, but the student's underlying difficulty may not have been resolved. Since addressing the underlying difficulty takes more time, we offered the students a voluntary supplementary CS0 course using the Extreme Apprenticeship instruction method. In this study, we estimated that students need between four to fifteen hours of one-on-one synchronous interaction time with the instructor based on prior exposure. Thematic Analysis of interactions identified fifteen themes in metacognitive domain interactions, eight themes in cognitive domain interactions, and six themes in affective domain interactions.

Recently, a number of studies have examined the lived experiences of the international teaching assistants (ITAs) in the U.S. classrooms. The findings show that the ITAs face many challenges such as classroom management, instructional, linguistic, cultural and social challenges. Following this line of research, this interview-based study examined the lived experiences of a group of ITAs using a qualitative methodology. The qualitative approach was intentionally selected to add an interpretive stance to the quantitative analyses prevalent in the current research on the ITAs. The paper aims to: (1) to provide insights into the ITAs' perspectives on their first semester of teaching in the U.S. including determining the challenges they face and (2) to consider possible revisions to existing ITAs' preparation programs based on the ITAs' own perspectives and a review of the available literature. This study contributes to the field by presenting information that has the potential to prompt future empirical investigations into educational cultures as they apply to novice instructors in international contexts and to inform and renew curricula for ITAs' preparation programs at the U.S. universities.

Higher education institutes of North America, Europe and far-east Asia have been leveraging the advances in ICT for quite some time. However, research based knowledge on the use of ICT in the higher education institutes of central and south-east Asia is still not readily available. The study presented in this paper explores a variant of teaching and learning laboratory sessions using multi-media in an Indian engineering institute. Multi-media tutorials were used to self-teach Linux operating system to the second and third year students of IT and non-IT branches of engineering degree program. The paper contains the description of the sessions conducted, empirical data, results and impact on students' learning. The results reveal that multi-media tutorials can be highly useful and beneficial in the early years of engineering to create the solid footing needed for further studies. They act as multipliers for capacity building efforts of students and encourage self-learning.

Traditional e-learning systems lack the personalization feature to guide learners for selecting the most suitable courses needed. Choosing appropriate courses in the seminal years is important for a future learner who depends on such decisions, as selecting the wrong courses means a mismatch between learner's capability and personal interests. Therefore, a recommender system was developed to suggest and direct the students in selecting the appropriate courses. This study presents algorithms to personalize courses for scholars based on their interests to make learning effective and more productive. The hybrid methodology has been used to retrieve useful information and make accurate recommendations to help learners to increase their performance and improve their satisfaction level. The results suggest that a hybrid approach is better as it will enjoy all the advantages of the individual recommender systems and mitigate their limitations. A threshold-based nearest neighborhood approach will further strengthen the proposed system by finding a similar learner for targeted learners.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between individual motivation -- both intrinsic and extrinsic -- and learning effectiveness; moreover, this paper also investigates whether this relationship is moderated by gender. Design/methodology/approach: A quasi-experimental study was conducted. The research measured intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and learning effectiveness among 1,491 students attending a course-work in informatics and computer basics in three different contexts: Burundi, Morocco and India. Findings: Findings suggest that intrinsic motivation has a positive effect on learning effectiveness, while extrinsic motivation has a negative effect on learning effectiveness. It also shows that gender has a moderating role. Originality/value: This research offers interesting contributions to the extant literature: first, it is the first to consider the moderating role of gender in the relationship between students' motivation and learning effectiveness; second, it proposes the analysis of a rather broad data set with 1,491 students, thus providing strong empirical research based on a consistent data set.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have lately emerged as an effective form of distance education. Computer science is one of those disciplines in which MOOCs are quite common. We conducted a survey to know the opinion of computer science instructors and undergraduate students on MOOCs in an Indian university in March 2018. Of the 26 instructors and 273 students who participated, 73% instructors and 87% students reported to have attended MOOCs. We found that 50% instructors and 72% students considered MOOCs to be a more comprehensive source of knowledge and 54% instructors and 76% students felt that MOOCs let students learn faster when compared to courses taught in a classroom. Moreover, 58% instructors believed that the courses they teach in classrooms can also be taught effectively through MOOCs. The instructors and students appreciated several aspects of MOOCs. However, the students had an opinion that MOOCs can augment classroom teaching but cannot replace it. MOOCs on computer programming (22%), artificial intelligence (9%), and computer networking (8%) were found to be particularly popular among the students.

Globalization has put countries in competitive and collaborative mode. Underdeveloped nations are in catch-up phase, developing nations are in competitive phase and the advanced nations are in commanding phase with respect to certain technologies. Innovation--Technological, Business and Education--is imperative for sustainable socio-economic development. Education innovation is basis for technological and business innovation. With the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), curricula, mode of instruction and teaching-learning methods are undergoing major revision. There is attitudinal mismatch between digital native learners and digital immigrant teachers. Engineering education needs revisiting curricula and pedagogy. "Knowledge" acquisition, guided/unguided, "skill" development, simulated/hands-on, and "concern" about society are part of Teaching-Learning processes. Innovation-centric education radar is presented that relates four key dimensions: Offerings (What), Beneficiaries (WHO), Processes (How), and Presence (Where) Assessment and accreditation bodies in various countries for higher technical education place high weightage for Teaching-Learning processes. Innovation needs to be fostered among students and teachers during Teaching-Learning (T-L) processes. Inclusive innovation that may comprise laboratory based structured innovation and Jugaad/unstructured intuitive innovation needs to be promoted for rapid inclusive growth. Bridging Vocational training with engineering education is also advocated to meet huge demand of quality technicians and engineers with entrepreneurial traits. Inclusive innovation will accelerate inclusive growth of the country. Steps to augment innovation may include curricular reforms, faculty development, prolonged academic leadership, accreditation renewal on higher standards, innovation-conducive pedagogy, adopting a village for overall growth, professional communication. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

Self-regulation is the controlling of a process or activity by the students who are involved in Problem solving in Physics rather than by an external agency (Johnson, 2011). Selfregulated learning consists of three main components: cognition, metacognition, and motivation. Cognition includes skills necessary to encode, memorise, and recall information. Metacognition includes skills that enable learners to understand and monitor their cognitive processes. Motivation includes beliefs and attitudes that affect the use and development of cognitive and metacognitive skills. The present study made its sincere attempt to develop self-regulatory strategies that are integrated into Physics problem solving. It also took cognizance of cognition as a thinking component, Metacognitive awareness among the students as a chief component of self-regulatory strategies and multimedia as a component of motivation. The present investigation was carried out in S.R.V.S Higher Secondary school, Karaikal. A sample of 90 XII students was taken for the study. Out of 90 students, 45 students belong to computer Science and 45 students belong to Biology group. Both of the groups have Physics as the compulsory subject. The students are divided into two groups namely control and experimental group based on the mathematical ability and Physics achievement score. Experimental research method with control design was adopted for the study. The major findings of the study reveal that there exists marked difference between Post-test1 and post-test2 for the following variables of experimental group in Physics problem solving ability, self regulatory awareness, knowledge of ICT and students attitude towards learning Physics. It is also noted that self-regulatory strategies with interactive multimedia effective for enhancing problem solving ability in physics among higher secondary students.

Quality of education can be enriched with better outcome in undergraduate (UG) computer science and engineering program with the introduction of High Performance Computing (HPC) courses into the UG curriculum. The paper gives the background of the author’s institution, processes of curricula enhancement, infrastructure development to enable students to carry out the work and records the students’ achievements academic year wise. The paper also discusses the evolution and continuous upgrading of the HPC courses along with the issues and challenges experienced. The paper gives the details about the courses along with the process of teaching and evaluation. It lists the students’ research achievements with a focus on HPC, for each academic year. Although the paper has focused on UG HPC education for the past seven academic years, the author also provides additional information about HPC subjects introduced to postgraduate (PG) students of computer science and engineering at various levels in the academic year 2015–16. The paper aims to serve as reference for those faculty and students who wish to introduce similar HPC courses at their schools by making use of the best practices that helped us in providing better inputs to our students to attain laudable results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of Rogers theory of perceived attributes, authors propose a framework that can predict students' motivation to adopt programming contest like ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). In this paper we investigate the attributes for adoption of programming contest in a social group comprising of (N = 1245) undergraduate engineering students from the regional finals of the contest held in India over a period of 3 years. The results revealed that student motivations are strongly associated with attributes like relative advantage, compatibility, ease of use, peer influence, perceived enjoyment and perceived usefulness. Overall, students expressed positive attitude towards adopting programming contests as it helped improve their problem solving and programming skills and overall employability. Both gender was in agreement that joining and winning programming contests is a status symbol.

The need for computing education in the K-12 curriculum has grown globally. The Republic of Korea is not an exception. In response to the need, the Korean Ministry of Education has announced an outline for software-centric computing education in the K-12 system, which aims at enhancing the current computing education with software emphasis. In this paper, we review the outline from a higher education perspective and provide insights into its constructive improvement based on our experience in computer science education in higher education and a study of global initiatives on computing education. We also consider the social environment for computing education in Korea. In the proposed implementation, we first discuss goals for software-centric computing education and identify areas of focus. The identified areas are discussed in terms of topics to be covered and appropriate exposure of knowledge depth in the three levels in the Korean K-12 system. We then discuss necessary preparations for the success of the plan from academic, governmental and social perspectives.

Tremendous changes are taking place in the world which certainly influence the system of education, and teacher education too cannot remain immune to these global changes. Information Technology (IT] is affecting teachers, individuals and society. Digital learning has opened the doors of classrooms and made knowledge accessible even for those sitting at home. The preparation of teachers has also changed with the passage of time and with the change in expectations of society. Teachers have always played a crucial role in preparing communities and societies towards exploring new horizons and achieving higher levels of progress and development. The teacher educators occupy a pivotal position in the system of education. The success of any educational reform depends upon the quality of teachers and in turn the quality of teachers depends to a large extent on the quality of teacher education. In view of the above fact, the computer education paper was introduced as a compulsory paper in the common core curriculum for B.Ed course, for all the secondary teacher-training institutions in the state. The present researcher conducted a survey with a designed questionnaire to assess the computer usage, computer literacy, and the attitude of B.Ed trainees towards teaching computer education. A sample of 200 B.Ed. students from government and private colleges of education both male and female from the Kakatlya University region, were included to make a through analysis using statistical evidence. The study reveals many facts regarding the availability of computers in educational institutions and the percentage of student and teacher users.

Present paper aims to give an insight in the field of Mechatronics, specifically its standard of education in India. We have investigated this field right from its origin. We have analyzed how it expanded as a proper discipline of engineering and in which direction the development in this field is going now and, at the same time, its status of education in India and where we are in addressing the industry's need both in terms of quality and quantity of students. We have also assessed why Mechatronics is an essential branch considering its multi-disciplinary nature. The point is that it holds blatant importance for time to come. Life's most complicated problems cannot be addressed by the knowledge of only one engineering science. In today's world we need professionals who are "good jack(s) of all trades and master(s) of one" changing the old saying. For implementing this edited saying students will need to address real-world problems, so laboratory-based learning should be even more emphasized in this branch. Consequently, we have also looked on the laboratory works that are included in these courses, considering what aspects should be covered in them. Skillsets required by students such as implementation of hardware, coding, system modeling have been also discussed. Future prospects in this discipline have also been explored. The epilogue consists in recommendations to educational institutions based on our findings.

Agile software development is an iterative and incremental methodology, where solutions evolve from self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Pair programming is a type of agile software development technique where two programmers work together with one computer for developing software. This paper reports the results of the pair programming exercise which was carried out among fifty six post graduate students of Master of Computer Applications (MCA) who are engaged in developing small applications as a part of their Visual Programming laboratory course at Kumaraguru College of Technology (KCT) during the academic year 2012-2013. The basic intent of the study is to explore the possibilities of adopting pair programming as a pedagogical tool in higher educational setting. The study investigates the possibilities of deploying purposeful pair programming modules to facilitate knowledge sharing in regular laboratory sessions. The research findings suggest that pair programming can be a useful approach to teach computer programming in higher education to facilitate effective knowledge sharing among the students.

Computer science (CS) and its enabling technologies are at the heart of this information age, yet its adoption as a core subject by senior secondary students in Indian schools is low and has not reached critical mass. Though there have been efforts to create core curriculum standards for subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Math, CS seems to have been kept outside the purview of such efforts leading to its marginalization. As a first step, using the Darmstadt model from the ITiCSE working group that provides a systematic categorization approach to CS education in schools, we coded and analyzed the CS situation for the Indian schools. Next, we focused on the motivation category of the Darmstadt model and investigated behavioral intentions of secondary school students and teachers from 332 schools in India. Considering the CS subject as an educational innovation, using Rogers' Theory of Diffusion of Innovations, we propose a pedagogical framework for innovation attributes that can significantly predict-adoption of the CS subject among potential-adopter students and teachers. Data was analyzed to answer research questions about student and teacher intentions, influence of gender, school management, and school location in adopting CS. Interestingly, girls, urban students, teachers, and private schools were seen favoring the adoption of CS. An important issue that needed to be addressed, however, was the interchangeable use of terms like CS, Informatics, ICT, and digital literacy. Through our article, we offer a promising picture of the educational policy directives and the academic environment in India that is rapidly growing and embracing CS as a core subject of study in schools. We also analyze the factors that influence the adoption of CS by school students and teachers and conclude that there is a very positive response for CS among educators and students in India.

The present paper aims to investigate the errors of Pakistani learners of English in their writeups. The major goal of this research is to figure out common errors which students make during extemporaneous writing. This research was intended to identify, classify, define & then explain causes behind this lack of skill among students. To do this research, quantitative method was used. 20 participants (10 males & 10 females) were recruited from the department of Computer Science, Sindh Madressatul Islam University Karachi and Orasoft Training Institute, Karachi. The participants were asked to write a paragraph (questionnaire attached in Appendix-1) which was used as a tool of data collection in this research and to identify the classification of errors which students make in their writings. For this research, the researchers analyzed each questionnaire and marked the errors and then formed the tables for each category of error comprising of number of students made this error which was used for conclusion and leading to the root cause of errors made in their write-ups. During analysis of their write-ups, the study was able to point out 111 errors (in 11 different categories), it was also found that the most common type of error which participants made during writing was punctuation (36.93 & of total errors). There was no major difference between error pattern of male & female students since frequency of errors made by them was just a slightly different (61:50). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses various factors involved in planning and implementing an introductory computer science course in an Indian secondary school located in Bahrain. Topics discussed include computer literacy; selection criteria for microcomputers; funding; computer laboratories; teacher training; criteria for student selection; students' viewpoints; teaching style and its effect on learning; and students' performance. (15 references) (LRW)