Self-efficacy, or the belief in one's ability to accomplish a task or achieve a goal, can significantly influence the effectiveness of various instructional methods to induce learning gains. The importance of self-efficacy is particularly pronounced in complex subjects like Computer Science, where students with high self-efficacy are more likely…

Recent years have seen a growing interest in block-based programming environments for computer science education. While these environments hold significant potential for novice programmers, they lack the adaptive support necessary to accommodate students exhibiting a wide range of initial capabilities and dispositions toward computing. A promising…

This paper characterized the extent of collaboration of pairs of novice programmers as they traced and debugged fragments of code using cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). This was a preliminary analysis that specifically aimed to compare and assess the collaboration of pairs consisting of two individuals who may have different or…

The impact of a novice programmer's first language on their subsequent achievement in further computing education has been the subject of much study in the field of computer science education. Our research is a retrospective study of more than 10,000 undergraduate students enrolled in CS1 (introduction to computer programming) from 118 US college…

The present paper introduces some strategies used in teaching an Informatics course for non-IT first year university students. The strategies were developed during several years, using the main principles of flexible and blended learning. The methodology has been based on the results of experiments with students from social sciences, economics and…