The global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges to higher education institutions worldwide. As governments announced lockdown measures that placed restrictions and mandatory closures on establishments that traditionally required gatherings, universities worldwide cancelled face-to-face classes and adapted their mode of…

Biology is a data-driven discipline facilitated greatly by computer programming skills. This article describes an introductory experiential programming activity that can be integrated into distance learning environments. Students are asked to develop their own Python programs to identify the nature of alleles linked to disease. This activity…

In this paper, we describe a teaching scenario using a virtual environment (known also in the context of the 'metaverse'). This is motivated by the challenges that arise during the pandemic. More and more teaching scenarios are transferred to online learning settings, which allow learning at any time and at any time. One of the possibilities are…

The report, overseen by the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) on behalf of the European Commission and of the European Education and Culture Executive Agency is the second report in the series dedicated to promoting inspiring practices in digital education from the 27 European Union…

Offering timely feedback on programming while encouraging learners to engage in critical evaluation of programs are the objectives of peer-testing. We report on a peer-testing experiment with students on distant campuses using a Web platform. The experiment shows the potential that peertesting has to help students transition from passive learners…

Elementary and secondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is the foundation for students' entry into postsecondary STEM majors as well as a wide variety of STEM occupations. Proficiency in STEM fields is vital to economic growth and international competitiveness and important for all citizens in an increasingly…

One of the challenges of global software engineering courses is to bring the practices and experience of large geographically distributed teams into the local and time-limited environment of a classroom. Over the last 6 years, an on-campus studio course for software engineering has been developed at the University of Queensland (UQ) that places…

The opinions on MOOCs go to extremes, covering a wide variety of topics, affecting economy, pedagogy, and computer science which makes it hard to keep oversight. Despite the many excellent research reports and articles, an overview of the bigger picture, providing a holistic qualitative summary of the different opinions, is still very welcome.…

This article presents a role-play game for software project management (SPM) in a three-dimensional online multiuser virtual world. The Opensimulator platform is used for the creation of an immersive virtual environment that facilitates students' collaboration and realistic interaction, in order to manage unexpected events occurring during the…

This paper presents the main findings, and lessons learned, from introducing a synchronous peer collaboration activity in a distance learning computer science course. Synergo, a software that supports such an approach, was used in this activity. The organizational, technical, and academic challenges of introducing this activity in the course are…

This paper examines the comparative private costs of distance and conventional (classroom-based) university students in Nigeria. A total of 200 subjects comprising students registered for the B.Sc. Computer Science and B.A. English Studies programmes at the University of Lagos, Nigeria and the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) were…

This paper outlines the adaptation of a course on the management of network services in operating systems, called NetServicesOS, to the context of the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA). NetServicesOS is a mandatory course in one of the official graduate programs in the Faculty of Computer Science at the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a…

This paper reports on work undertaken within a pilot study concerned with the design, development, and evaluation of online computer science training courses. Drawing on recent developments in e-learning technology, these courses were structured around the principles of a learner-oriented approach for use with adult learners. The paper describes a…

How does early feedback change the programming problem solving in an online environment and help students choose correct approaches? This study was conducted in a sample of students learning programming in an online course entitled Introduction to C++ and OOP (Object Oriented Programming) using the ANGEL learning management system platform. My…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a hybrid learning approach to deliver a computer science course concerning the Microsoft office PowerPoint 2003 program in comparison to delivering the same course content in the form of traditional lectures. A hundred and seventy-two first year university students were randomly…