Background and Context: Feedback on one's progress is essential to new programming language learners, particularly in out-of-classroom settings. Though many study materials offer assessment mechanisms, most do not examine the accuracy of the feedback they deliver, nor give evidence on its validity. Objective: We investigate the potential use of a…

Background and Context: To educate students about programming plagiarism and collusion, we introduced an approach that automatically reports how similar a submitted program is to others. However, as most students receive similar feedback, those who engage in plagiarism and collusion might feel inadequately warned. Objective: When students are…

Background and Context: Data science and statistics are used across a broad spectrum of professions, experience levels and programming languages. The popular scientific computing languages, such as Matlab, Python and R, were organized without using empirical methods to show evidence for or against their design choices, resulting in them feeling…

Background and Context: We explore the potential for understanding the processes involved in students' programming based on studying their behaviour and dialogue with each other and "conversations" with their programs. Objective: Our aim is to explore how a perspective of inquiry can be used as a point of departure for insights into how…

Background and Context: Self-regulated learning (SRL) skills are critical aspect of learning to program and are predictive of academic success. Early college students often struggle to use these skills, but can improve when given targeted instruction. However, it is not yet clear what skills are best to prioritize. Objective: We seek to create a…

Background and Context: Students learning the C programming language struggle to debug, and to understand the runtime behaviour of, their programs. Objective: We examine a tool that combines several novice-focused error detection, program visualization, and debugging techniques, to investigate which features students use in real study sessions,…

Background and Context: Pair programming is an important approach to fostering students' programming and collaborative learning skills. However, the empirical findings on pair programming are mixed, especially concerning effective instructional design. Objective: The objective of this literature review is to provide lecturers with systematic…

Background and Context: Source code plagiarism is a common occurrence in undergraduate computer science education. Many source code plagiarism detection tools have been proposed to address this problem. However, such tools do not identify plagiarism, nor suggest what assignment submissions are suspicious of plagiarism. Source code plagiarism…

Background and Context: This study looks at computational thinking (CT) assessment of programming artifacts within the context of CT integrated with science education through computational modeling. Objective: The goal is to explore methodologies for assessment of student-constructed computational models through two lenses: functionality and…

Background and Context: Efforts to engage adult learners in computer science in the United States have been largely unsuccessful. While research examining the use of music for teaching computer programming with K-12 learners is emerging, little research with adult learners exists. Objective: This study evaluates the effect of computer coding…

Background and Context: Computational thinking (CT) is a critical part of computing education in middle school. The existing practices of collaboration and collaborative design activities at this education level pairs well with CT practices, but this interaction has previously been under-explored in the existing literature. Objective: In this…

Background and Context: We replicated and expanded on previous work about how well students learn dynamic programming, a difficult topic for students in algorithms class. Their study interviewed a number of students at one university in a single term. We recruited a larger sample size of students, over several terms, in both large public and…

Background and Context: Gender research shows that women are better at reading comprehension. Other studies indicate a lower tendency in women to choose STEM professions. Since data modeling requires reading skills and also belongs in the areas of information systems and computer science (STEM professions), these findings provoked our curiosity.…

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…

Background and Context: Multiple studies report that experienced instructors lack consensus on the difficulty of programming tasks for novices. However, adequately gauging task difficulty is needed for alignment: to select and structure tasks in order to assess what students can and cannot do. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine…