Earning Open Badges instead of regular grades and credits can be a motivating factor for high-performing students in terms of attending classes and completing assignments in extracurricular courses, but to what extent? And for what student profiles? To tackle these questions, we conducted a quantitative study with high-performing students. Each…

This study investigated the effects of pre-training types on cognitive load, self-efficacy, and problem-solving in computer programming. Pre-training was provided to help learners acquire schemas related to problem-solving strategies. 84 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of three groups and each group received three different…

The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of the microlearning instructional approach in an online introductory database programming classroom. The ultimate goal of this study is to inform educators and instructional designers on the design and development of microlearning content that maximizes student learning. Grounded within the…

This study had two objectives: (1) to evaluate the validity of an instrument for measuring differentiated cognitive loads in its Spanish version; and (2) to evaluate the three types of cognitive loads and their relationship with self-efficacy, self-concept, and interest in programming of students in an introductory course. Understanding and…

Computer programming is a skill of increasing importance in scientific and technological fields. However, in introductory computer science (CS1) courses in higher education, approximately one in every three students fails. A common reason is that students are overwhelmed by an accelerated and inflexible pace of learning that jeopardizes success.…

As online learning has become an inevitable trend in the post-peak era of the COVID-19 pandemic, distributed pair programming (DPP) is gaining momentum in both education and industry. DDP serves as a collaborative programming approach and also benefits the development of computational thinking, a fundamental skill in today's world. This study…