This paper reports on a series of introductory programming workshops, initially targeting female high school students, which utilised Lego Mindstorms robots. Cognitive load theory (CLT) was applied to the instructional design of the workshops, and a controlled experiment was also conducted investigating aspects of the interface. Results indicated…

Modern biological sciences require practitioners to have increasing levels of knowledge, competence, and skills in mathematics and programming. A recent review of the science curriculum at the University of Queensland, a large, research-intensive institution in Australia, resulted in the development of a more quantitatively rigorous undergraduate…

Contributing student pedagogy (CSP) builds upon social constructivist and community-based learning principles to create engaging and productive learning experiences. What makes CSP different from other, related, learning approaches is that it involves students both learning from and also explicitly valuing the contributions of other students. The…

This study examined the relationship between students working in a technology-rich environment and their development of higher order thinking skills. Based on a PhD thesis, which examined a greater range of relationships than can be reported here, this article focuses on developing critical thinking skills within a technology-rich environment.…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 13th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2016), October 28-30, 2016, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by the University of Mannheim, Germany, and endorsed by the…

Many engineering schools include computer programming as part of a first-year course taught to large engineering classes. This approach is effective in rationalizing resources and improving the cost-effectiveness of course delivery. In addition, it can lead to wholesale improvements in teaching and learning. However, class sizes and the variety of…

This paper reports on the findings from a quantitative research study into the use of a software tool that was built to support a part-complete solution method (PCSM) for the learning of computer programming. The use of part-complete solutions to programming problems is one of the methods that can be used to reduce the cognitive load that students…

The Second International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM2009) was held at the University of Cordoba, Spain, on July 1-3, 2009. EDM brings together researchers from computer science, education, psychology, psychometrics, and statistics to analyze large data sets to answer educational research questions. The increase in instrumented…