Self-regulation of learning (SRL) is an essential ability for academic success in multiple educational contexts, including programming education. However, understanding how students regulate themselves during programming learning is still limited. This exploratory research aimed to investigate the regulatory strategies externalized by 51 students…

Students face several difficulties in introductory programming courses (CS1), often leading to high dropout rates, student demotivation, and lack of interest. The literature has indicated that the adequate use of gamification might improve learning in several domains, including CS1. However, the understanding of which (and how) factors influence…

In recent years, computing education researchers have investigated the impact of problem context on students' learning and programming performance. This work continues the investigation motivated, in part, by cognitive load theory and educational research in computer science and other disciplines. The results of this study could help inform…

Active and collaborative learning has shown considerable promise for improving student outcomes and reducing group disparities. As one common form of collaborative learning, pair programming is an adapted work practice implemented widely in higher education computing programs. In the classroom setting, it typically involves two computer science…

Software modeling is an integral practice for software engineers, especially as the complexity of software solutions increases. Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the industry standard for software modeling. however, it is often used incorrectly and misunderstood by novice software designers. This study is centered around understanding patterns of…

Learning to program requires perseverance, practice, and the mindset that programming skills are improved through these activities (i.e., that everyone has the potential to become good at programming). In contrast to an entity mindset, individuals with an incremental mindset believe that ability is malleable and can be improved with effort. Prior…

Several experiments on the effects of pair programming versus solo programming in the context of education have been reported in the research literature. We present a meta-analysis of these studies that accounted for 18 manuscripts with 28 independent effect sizes in the domains of programming assignments, exams, passing rates, and affective…

The computing education research literature contains a wide variety of methods that can be used to identify students who are either at risk of failing their studies or who could benefit from additional challenges. Many of these are based on machine-learning models that learn to make predictions based on previously observed data. However, in…

The number of computer science (CS) courses has been dramatically expanding in U.S. high schools (HS). In comparison with well-established courses in mathematics and science, little is known about how the decisions made by HS CS teachers regarding how and what to teach impact student performance later in introductory college CS courses. Drawing on…

We describe a method for analyzing student data from online programming exercises. Our approach uses contingency tables that combine whether or not a student answered an online exercise correctly with the number of attempts that the student made on that exercise. We use this method to explore the relationship between student performance on online…

This study analyzes the impact of adding a review exercises module to an online tool used in a software engineering degree program. The objective of the module is to promote students' self-learning effort to improve their performance. We also intend to determine if this new feature has any effect on the amount of code copies detected in lab…

Analyzing the process data of students as they complete programming assignments has the potential to provide computing educators with insights into both their students and the processes by which they learn to program. In prior research, we explored the relationship between (a) students' programming behaviors and course outcomes, and (b) students'…

This article discusses the evolution of a single undergraduate computer graphics course over five semesters, driven by a primary question: if one could offer only one undergraduate course in graphics, what would it include? This constraint is relevant to many small and medium-sized colleges that lack resources, adequate expertise, and enrollment…