This article reports on a design-based research study centered on the conception and the assessment of the "Pyrates" application. This online serious game aims at introducing Python programming to K-12 students while easing the transition from block-based to text-based languages. After we present the various aspects underlying the…

Prior studies in the Computer Science education literature have illustrated that novices make many mistakes in composing SQL queries. Query formulation proves to be difficult for students. Only recently, some headway was made towards understanding why SQL leads to so many mistakes, by uncovering student misconceptions. In this article, we shed new…

Programming-based activities are becoming more widespread in curricula. Our theoretical and empirical investigation seeks to identify appropriate ways to connect computer programming and algorithmics to mathematical learning. We take the intermediate value theorem as our starting point, as it is covered by the French school curriculum, and because…

Object-Oriented paradigm is a common paradigm for introductory programming courses. However, many teachers find that transitioning to teaching this paradigm is a difficult task. To overcome this complexity, many experienced teachers use microworlds to give beginner students an intuitive and rapid understanding of fundamental abstract concepts of…

How to support students in programming learning has been a great research challenge in the last years. To address this challenge, prior works have mainly focused on proposing solutions based on syntactic analysis to provide students with personalized feedback about their grammatical programming errors and misconceptions. However, syntactic…

Implementing remote and blended higher education courses motivated the design for new support services for autonomous learning. Thus, combining a competence-based approach and self-regulation, the COMPER project offers a service to be used in addition to the courses. It consists of a graphical presentation of the learners' competency profile…

This paper presents the "Multi-Role Project" method (MRP), a broadly applicable project-based learning method, and describes its implementation and evaluation in the context of a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) course. The MRP method is designed around a meta-principle that considers the project learning activity…