Design patterns for learning are about articulating, testing and sharing the principles of problem solving in the educational context. In this way, multiple patterns are developed to solve common problems, described in various pattern language formats. Therefore, this work is about characterizing and establishing functional relationships between…

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…

Background: With the development of computational literacy, there has been a surge in both research and practice application of text-based and block-based modalities within the field of computer programming education. Despite this trend, little work has actually examined how learners engaging in programming process when utilizing these two major…

Background and Context: We explore the potential for understanding the processes involved in students' programming based on studying their behaviour and dialogue with each other and "conversations" with their programs. Objective: Our aim is to explore how a perspective of inquiry can be used as a point of departure for insights into how…

This study investigated common student errors and underlying difficulties of two groups of Chinese middle school students in an introductory Python programming course using data in the automated assessment tool (AAT) Mulberry. One group of students was from a typical middle school while the other group was from a high-ability middle school. By…

Programming skills are increasingly important to the current digital economy, yet these skills have long been regarded as challenging to acquire. A central challenge in learning programming skills involves the simultaneous use of multiple component skills. This article investigates why students struggle with integrating component skills--a…

Background and Context: Gender research shows that women are better at reading comprehension. Other studies indicate a lower tendency in women to choose STEM professions. Since data modeling requires reading skills and also belongs in the areas of information systems and computer science (STEM professions), these findings provoked our curiosity.…

The value of an instructor is that she exactly recognizes what the learner is struggling with and provides constructive feedback straight to the point. This work aims at a step towards this type of feedback in the context of an introductory programming course, where students perform program execution tracing to align their understanding of Java…

Theories on learning show that formative feedback that is immediate, specific, corrective, and positive is essential to improve novice students' motivation and learning. However, most prior work on programming feedback focuses on highlighting student's mistakes, or detecting failed test cases after they submit a solution. In this article, we…

SQL query writing is a challenging task for novices, even after considerable training. Query writing is a programming task and a translation task where the writer must translate a user's request for information into code that conforms to the structure, constraints, and syntax of an SQL SELECT statement and that references specific tables and…

The types of programming errors that novice programmers make and struggle to resolve have long been of interest to researchers. Various past studies have analyzed the frequency of compiler diagnostic messages. This information, however, does not have a direct correlation to the types of errors students make, due to the inaccuracy and imprecision…

Background: Students make many errors in visual programming. In order to learn from these, it is important that students regulate their emotions and view errors as learning opportunities. Aims: This study aimed to explore to what extent momentary emotions, specifically enjoyment, anxiety and boredom, as well as the error learning orientation of…

As the cyber security landscape dynamically evolves and security professionals work to keep apace, modern-day educators face the issue of equipping a new generation for this dynamic landscape. With cyber-attacks and vulnerabilities substantially increased over the past years in frequency and severity, it is important to design and build secure…

Block programming has been suggested as a way of engaging young learners with the foundations of programming and computational thinking in a syntax-free manner. Indeed, syntax errors--which form one of two broad categories of errors in programming, the other one being logic errors--are omitted while block programming. However, this does not mean…

Relying on shared tasks and stimuli to conduct research can enhance the replicability of findings and allow a community of researchers to collect large data sets across multiple experiments. This approach is particularly relevant for experiments in spatial navigation, which often require the development of unfamiliar large-scale virtual…