COVID-19 presented a challenge to the traditional methods of teaching programming and robotics in a secondary school environment. When campuses were closed around the world in the spring of 2020, it was not possible for students to access the computer labs nor the robotics equipment that was traditionally used to facilitate the instruction of…

Abstraction is a key concept in CS, one of the most fundamental ideas underlying CS and its practice. However, teaching this soft concept to novices is a very difficult task, as discussed by many CSE experts. This paper discusses this issue, and suggests a general framework for teaching abstraction in CS to novices, a framework that would fit into…

The application of virtual reality is becoming ever more important as technology reaches new heights allowing virtual environments (VE) complete with global illumination. One successful application of virtual environments is educational interventions meant to treat individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). VEs are effective with these…

Virtual worlds provide useful platforms for social behavioral research, but impose stringent limitations on the rules of engagement, responsiveness, and data collection, along with other resource restrictions. The major challenge from a computer science standpoint in developing group behavior applications for such environments is accommodating the…

This dissertation presents evidence that the production of Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is far more alone than together; it is far more often individual work done "in company" than it is teamwork. When tasks appear too large for an individual they are more likely to be deferred until they are easier rather than be undertaken through…

The Personalised System of Instruction is a form of mastery learning which, though it has been proven to be educationally effective, has never seriously challenged the dominant lecture-tutorial teaching method in higher education and has largely fallen into disuse. An information and communications technology assisted version of the Personalised…

The Third International Conference on Data Mining (EDM 2010) was held in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. It follows the second conference at the University of Cordoba, Spain, on July 1-3, 2009 and the first edition of the conference held in Montreal in 2008, and a series of workshops within the AAAI, AIED, EC-TEL, ICALT, ITS, and UM conferences. EDM 2011…

This paper examines the effective deployment of conversational agents in virtual worlds from the perspective of researchers/practitioners in cognitive psychology, computing science, learning technologies and engineering. From a cognitive perspective, the major challenge lies in the coordination and management of the various channels of information…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…