Background and Context: The Domain-Specific Programming (DSP) platforms EarSketch and TunePad are being used widely in schools for coding novices. Existing studies on both platforms have mainly concentrated on attitudinal changes, leaving a gap in the literature. Objective: The purpose of this research was to advance our understanding of two…

This research investigated how the bug tracker database of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Moodle is developed as an application of crowd work. The bug tracker is used by software developers, who write and maintain Moodle's code, but also by a wider public world of ordinary Moodle users who can report bugs. Despite many studies of the…

Background and Context: Computational Thinking (CT) has been recently integrated into new and revised Digital Technologies content (DTC) in the Technology learning area of the New Zealand School Curriculum. Objective: To aid this change, this research examined how CT supports learning outcomes in both music and programming with the Sonic Pi…

Background and Context: Encouraging undergraduate programming students to think more about their software development processes is challenging. Most programming courses focus on coding skill development and mastering programming language features; subsequently software development processes (e.g. planning, code commenting, and error debugging) are…

Computer programming is not commonly taught to geographers as a part of geographic information system (GIS) courses, but the advent of NeoGeography, big data and open GIS means that programming skills are becoming more important. To encourage the teaching of programming to geographers, this paper outlines a course based around a series of…

We report on a study comparing peer feedback with feedback written by tutors on a large, undergraduate software engineering programming class. Feedback generated by peers is generally held to be of lower quality to feedback from experienced tutors, and this study sought to explore the extent and nature of this difference. We looked at how…

Traditionally, learning resources are created by an instructor and distributed to their students. A contributing-student pedagogy (CSP) is one in which this responsibility shifts, placing students in control of creating the resources and sharing them with their peers. Technology plays a central role in supporting the collection and distribution of…

Over the last decade, the Intelligent Computer Tutoring Group (ICTG) has implemented many successful constraint-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) in a variety of instructional domains. Our tutors have proven their effectiveness not only in controlled lab studies but also in real classrooms, and some of them have been commercialized.…