Background: In agile software engineering team projects, effective collaboration and communication between members are essential for promoting agility and lean software development. Agile methodologies, which emphasize iterative development, collaboration and adaptability, are well suited to dynamic educational environments. However, agile teams…

This paper undertakes a thorough evaluation of ChatGPT's code generation capabilities, contrasting them with those of human programmers from both educational and software engineering standpoints. The emphasis is placed on elucidating its importance in these intertwined domains. To facilitate a robust analysis, we curated a novel dataset comprising…

While there have been many calls for teaching ethics and responsible computing, it is unclear how responsible computing instruction and technical learning interact. Some instructors even hesitate to include ethics in their courses, fearing it might distract students from learning technical computing content. An approach called…

Unified Modelling Language (UML) class diagrams are standard tools in software engineering education, typically analysed for syntactical correctness rather than their communicative dimensions. This study applies semiotic theory to investigate how first-year Bachelor of Computer Information Systems students engage with UML class diagrams as…

Aim/Purpose: This paper is part of a multi-case study that aims to test whether generative AI makes an effective coding assistant. Particularly, this work evaluates the ability of two AI chatbots (ChatGPT and Bing Chat) to generate concise computer code, considers ethical issues related to generative AI, and offers suggestions for how to improve…

Data transfer between isolated clusters is imperative for cybersecurity education, research, and testing. Such techniques facilitate hands-on cybersecurity learning in isolated clusters, allow cybersecurity students to practice with various hacking tools, and develop professional cybersecurity technical skills. Educators often use these remote…

Automatic program repair (APR) tools are valuable for students to assist them with debugging tasks since program repair captures the code modification to make a buggy program pass the given test-suite. However, the process of manually generating catalogs of code modifications is intricate and time-consuming. This article proposes contextual error…

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…

Domain models in software engineering--often represented as class diagrams--depict relevant classes in a given problem domain along with necessary relationships among those classes. These models are important because they establish links between the requirements of a given system under development and the subsequent phases of the systems…

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…

When the new programming language Pascal was developed in the 1970's, Walter Gander did not like it because because many features which he appreciated in prior programming languages were missing in Pascal. For example the block structure was gone, there were no dynamical arrays, no functions or procedures were allowed as parameters of a procedure,…

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) proposes to enhance active learning and student protagonism in order to improve academic performance. In this sense, different methodologies are emerging to create scenarios for self-regulation of their learning. In this study the cooperative, collaborative and interdisciplinary learning methodologies were…

Objectives: Code style is an important aspect of text-based programming because programs written with good style are considered easier to understand and change and so improve the maintainability of the delivered software product. However teaching code style is complicated by the existence of many style guides and standards that contain…

This study explores student perceptions of learning to code by evaluating AI-generated Python code. In an experimental exercise given to students in an introductory Python course at a business university, students wrote their own solutions to a Python program and then compared their solutions with AI-generated code. They evaluated both solutions…

Contribution: This article details the conduction of an experiment to investigate the knowledge that computer science graduate students have about safety-critical systems development, in particular, safety requirements specifications. Future research directions are also discussed. Background: Safety-critical systems have been increasingly used in…