Because previous research by Bayman and Mayer (1983) suggests that individuals who attempt to learn their first computer language develop a variety of misconceptions of the meanings of individual programming statements, this study investigated whether it is possible to enhance beginning programmers' understanding of the programming statements…

These papers describe efforts toward the systematic improvement of a software environment called SOLO (Eisenstadt, 1978), which has been used with cognitive psychology students at the Open University in Great Britain and is geared towards the manipulation of assertional databases. The first paper, by Eisenstadt, Laubsch, and Kahney, provides an…

Some 120 undergraduate students participated in experiments to learn how novice computer programers learn to interact with the computer. Two instructional booklets were used: A "rule" booklet consisted of definitions and examples of seven modified FORTRAN statements and appropriate grammar rules; the "model" booklet was…

Professional computer education organizations serve a valuable function by generating, collecting, and disseminating information concerning the role of the computer in education. This report touches briefly on the reasons for the rapid and successful development of professional computer education organizations. A number of attributes of effective…

In order to obtain student feedback in computer programing courses at Duke University, a computer-based anonymous audience response system was used. This system consisted of a minicomputer, voting consoles, and a large electronic display. Students set their voting consoles in response to the question and the minicomputer interrogated the consoles.…

A computer managed instruction (CMI) package to teach BASIC programming, together with questions to be answered in its evaluation, are described. The training package consists of 16 learning modules coupled; an interactive CMI system generates pretests and posttests for each module and branches students to the next appropriate module. It is…

As part of an introductory computer programming course, students were assigned seven programs selected to expose them to the varied applications of BASIC. Three additional programs were selected by the students themselves from other courses or from topics in the text which had not been covered in class. The topic which seemed to arouse the…

The first section of this course on programming introduces LISP as a programming language designed to do symbol manipulation, with consequent prevalence in auto-instructional (AI) work. A programming language specifies in its description a number of primitive operations which the computer knows how to perform. An algorithm is the set of…

Reviews recent advances in microtechnology and describes the impact they will have on computer aided instruction and learning. It is suggested that distributed systems based on network technology will become widespread, and computer assisted guidance systems will be developed to assist new unskilled users. Eight references are given. (CHC)

Describes eight different levels of educational use of computers and proposes nine instructional goals for university computer resource centers to train teachers to become well-informed, competent computer users with a high level of computer literacy. (EAO)

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) during the decade of the 60's was characterized by a number of limiting factors: insufficiently powerful computers and terminals, restriction to a few rigid "teaching strategies," and the splitting of resources among too many projects below critical size. During the present decade, CAI has undergone a…

Computers are changing the lives of millions of people, but schools are still not producing many computer literate students. Rapid improvements in hardware technology and major progress in the development of software have put computers within reach of everyone. Computer literacy must now be treated as a functional tool similar to reading, writing,…

In anticipation of the educational needs of the late 1980s in science, mathematics, and engineering education, the National Science Foundation has supported a variety of projects that can serve as examples and models of the uses of computing in science education. These projects fall into three categories, focusing on the computer as a tool of…

Two abstracts and seventeen articles on computer assisted instruction (CAI) presented at the 1976 Association for Educational Data Systems (AEDS) convention are included here. Four new computer programs are described: Author System for Education and Training (ASET); GNOSIS, a Swedish/English CAI package; Statistical Interactive Programming System…