There is increasing interest in computer science and computing bachelor programs due to the growing importance of technology in the globalized world. Thus, as higher education institutions strive to serve a diverse student demographic, it is salient to gauge their programming abilities to improve guidance on learning processes regarding their…

Student identity measures in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields are a strong predictor of future persistence in those disciplines. However, there is a paucity of studies with validated measures of students' computer science (CS) identity. The aim of the present study was to assess the reliability and validity of a…

Background: Several attitude scales have been developed to measure students' attitudes toward computer programming, including the prominent one developed by Cetin and Ozden. The development of these scales stemmed from the elusive nature of attitude and the lack of specific constructs to measure attitude. These instruments measure students'…

Resilience is a critical personality trait that allows one to deal with difficulties, learn from failures, and maintain a positive attitude during task performance. However, it has not been understudied in a complex and challenging educational domain. The current research intends to address this gap by analyzing the specific characteristics of…

Learning programming challenges students who encounter difficulties such as resolving syntax and format errors. These challenges require students to invoke resilience to overcome programming problems and keep trying. In response, this study developed the programming resilience scale for university students (PRSUS). The snowball-sampling method was…

We present a psychometric evaluation of a revised version of the "Cybersecurity Concept Inventory" ("CCI"), completed by 354 students from 29 colleges and universities. The CCI is a conceptual test of understanding created to enable research on instruction quality in cybersecurity education. This work extends previous expert…

Trigonometry is an important part of secondary school mathematics, but it is usually challenging for students to understand and learn. Since trigonometry is learned and used at a university level in many fields, like physics or geodesy, it is important to have an insight into students' trigonometry knowledge before the beginning of the university…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) can potentially affect the lives of millions of people, but there is little research on how a programming MOOC could affect participants' lives after participation. In Estonia, we have organised several programming MOOCs over the years, attended by over 14,000 people. This inspired us to develop and validate a…

Interest has a key role in the learning and teaching processes. However, interest could be categorized as individual, situational, and topic interest. Situational interest that educators could design, develop, and organize with instructional design is the most significant. The structure of situational interest consists of triggered situational…

In this research, a scale was developed to determine the programming-oriented computational thinking skills of university students. The participants were 360 students studying in various departments at different universities in Turkey for computer programming. The scale consists of 33 items under conceptual knowledge, algorithmic thinking, and…

The purposes of the two studies reported in this research are to adapt and validate the instrument of the Evaluation Framework for Learning Analytics (EFLA) for learners into the Turkish context, and to examine how metacognitive and behavioral factors predict learner performance. Study 1 was conducted with 83 online learners enrolled in a 16-week…

This dissertation describes an experiment to investigate how learners with different levels of background in computer science learn core concepts of computer science, in particular, algorithms. We designed a study to focus on cognitive task analysis for eliciting the empirical mental elements of learning two graph algorithms. Cognitive workload…

This research aimed at evaluating the development and use of low-cost affective domain assessment instruments, culminating with personal and group characterization of representative global information technology (IT) professional values. Values and valuing are a compelling component of Bloom's affective domain of learning for engineering…

This paper presents an innovative method to tackle the automatic evaluation of programming assignments with an approach based on well-founded assessment theories (Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT)) instead of heuristic assessment as in other systems. CTT and/or IRT are used to grade the results of different items of…

This study aimed to develop Academic Motivation Scale for Learning Information Technology for university students. For this purpose, 120 randomly selected university students studying in different classes and faculties at KSU were invited to the study during the 2016-2017 academic year. To define the scale indicators students were asked to answer…