Search

The educational context for students and educators across the world changed when the COVID-19 pandemic forced most educational institutions to shut down all on-campus activities in the spring of 2020. In this paper, we explore how the study behaviors of first-year computing students in a large scale CS2 course were affected by the rapid change from campus-based to online learning. This research aims to evaluate the effect of moving to an online-only mode of studying and learning, and consequently gaining insight into the role of the physical campus in computing education. A mixed-method research approach was taken to reach these goals by combining interaction tracking data with weekly student reports and interviews. Results indicate that campus-based activities provide essential scaffolding for students' study behaviors, specifically time management and organization. Additionally, the physical study environment provided an informal space for social and academic interactions not found in the online sphere. Furthermore, when moving to the online study environment, students struggled with adapting their study behaviors, spending less time on organized activities and not changing their independent habits. Lastly, the online environment seemed to create considerable differences between those who mastered studying and those who did not, generating a larger ability gap than on campus. In the paper, we provide further descriptions of these findings and some recommendations for computing educators facing similar challenges.

Teaching assistants (TAs) are heavily used in computer science courses as a way to handle high enrollment and still being able to offer students individual tutoring and detailed assessments. TAs are themselves students who take on this additional role in parallel with their own studies at the same institution. Previous research has shown that being a TA can be challenging but has mainly been conducted on TAs from a single institution or within a single course. This paper offers a multi-institutional, multi-national perspective of challenges that TAs in computer science face. This has been done by conducting a thematic analysis of 180 reflective essays written by TAs from three institutions across Europe. The thematic analysis resulted in five main challenges: becoming a professional TA, student focused challenges, assessment, defining and using best practice, and threats to best practice. In addition, these challenges were all identified within the essays from all three institutions, indicating that the identified challenges are not particularly context-dependent. Based on these findings, we also outline implications for educators involved in TA training and coordinators of computer science courses with TAs.

This full research paper presents a study exploring first year computing students' study behavior and the effects of educational design. Some research has indicated that the relationship between students' study behavior and their academic performance is as strong as the relationship to more common predictors such as past performance and test scores. However, knowledge about students' study behavior, how behavior develops and is influenced by program and course design, and consequently, the effect various design parameters have on learning is limited. This paper presents a model describing computing students' study behavior and how these are affected by the educational design. Through a mixed-method approach, a population of computing students was followed through their first year. Results from in-depth interviews with students throughout their first year found that the educational structure and organization of a study program conditions the students' study behavior. In order to further investigate these tendencies, two surveys (N=215) were conducted within the whole first-year student population at the beginning and end of the year. A significant difference found was in the use of surface and deep strategies at the beginning and end for the first year, indicating that students shift from deep to surface learning during the year. Even if students initially seek a deep content-driven approach to learning, the structure of the education and other organizational factors may be the cause of a more surface and task-focused approach towards the end of the first year. Students' study behavior is constrained by the educational design, which furthermore may lead to different learning outcomes than desired. Researching and developing learning goals, course content, lectures and assignments is one way to improve computing education; however, this research suggests that taking a comprehensive and integrated approach to educational design might also lead to improvements. © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

In a world in high demand of engineering professionals, higher education should be effective and quality conscious. A better understanding of what type of activities that are best suited for improving students' learning could enable further improvements. In this paper, the effect of mandatory assignments on students' learning outcome in introductory programming courses is explored through a quasi-experimental research study. One group of students were exempted from the mandatory weekly assignments and followed up via biweekly sessions. A control group was recruited to follow an assignment regime in parallel. Through pre- and posttests the learning outcome of the two assignment structures was statistically evaluated. The results indicated that the group of students exempt from mandatory assignments achieved the same learning outcome as the control group. Similarly, no difference was found between the two groups on exam performance. Students have individual learning behaviors and learn to program in different ways, and the instructional design should facilitate individual learning trajectories. © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

Software engineering courses include practical and theoretical elements that give many options for pedagogical combinations among them. In this paper, we report on two different pedagogical approaches for an undergraduate, introductory project-based software engineering course with more than 500 students working in collaborative scrum teams. We call one approach ‘Every Student is an Innovator’, and the other ‘No Student Left Behind’. This SE course has been long-running, with stable learning objectives and content. However, from one year to another, we radically changed the pedagogical approach of the course along several dimensions, among them the technical framework, software tools, project topic, mentor roles, assessment form and frequency, feedback and degree of student innovativeness. We report on the perceived challenges, detailed changes, the anticipated effects on the course learning outcomes. The results showed that innovativeness and fun need freedom and flexibility with processes and technology. However, strict design requirements and systematic guidance ensure fulfillment of learning objectives. Analyzing student and staff feedback, we find that both approaches lead to students using more time than intended and worrying about unknown assessment criteria. © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

Ensuring that computer science students graduate and learn the desired curriculum is important in order to meet future demands. However, educational institutions have limited room for action as the number of students increases, without additional teaching and structural resources. The research presented here aims to combine knowledge about how computer science students' study and the effects of educational design to maximize the pedagogical potential within the room for action at universities today.

This paper reports a Norwegian validation study of a widely used instrument to measure students’ approaches to learning, namely, Bigg’s revised two-factor study process questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F). Its cultural sensitivity and psychometry evaluations have provoked rigorous discussion among educators in different languages. A survey design was adopted involving 253 undergraduate engineering students across two universities. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to test six models hypothesized to reflect the factor structures of R-SPQ-2F and unidimensionality of its subscales. The results showed appropriate fits of a two-factor first-order model with 10 items measuring deep approach and 9 items measuring surface approach subscales. The reliability was found to be high with coefficients of .81, .72 and .63 on deep subscale, surface subscale and the whole instrument respectively. Findings may be interpreted as evidence of cultural sensitivity of the instrument and more validation studies were recommended. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).

This lightning talk will present experiences from using a student-centered approach when implementing educational innovations in computer science programs. The Norwegian Center for Excellent IT education (Excited) is currently researching new ways to organize computer science education and innovative educational structures. By involving students from day one of the research and development process we hope to learn more about what educational and structural changes and innovations are most effective and why. However, we have faced some challenges in this effort. One challenge is the fact that many of the courses in need of innovation has a large student population. This can make it difficult to implement changes without substantial bureaucracy and organizational efforts, as well as the risk of damaging the students' educational progress. Another challenge is that the students do not respond well to the proposed changes. This was somewhat surprising; however, it is a problem that must be solved in order to succeed in creating better computer science education. Therefore, we have proposed using a student-centered approach to the implementation and evaluation of new initiatives. By organizing changes in smaller pilot-groups with students involved the whole time, we can hopefully reduce the bureaucracy and risk attached to changing large and important courses. Additionally, with the students involved every step of the way the resistance to change might decrease. The project has just begun, and this talk will present the initiative in more detail, experiences from the first semester and further plans.