Much attention in constructionism has focused on designing tools and activities that support learners in designing fully finished and functional applications and artefacts to be shared with others. But helping students learn to debug their applications often takes on a surprisingly more instructionist stance by giving them checklists, teaching…

The participatory view of learning emphasises students' identity construction. However, identity research in the context of programming education to cultivate students' computational thinking is scarce. In this study, an instrument of computational identity with components of engagement, imagination and affiliation, was developed and validated.…

This paper argues for the need to develop a relational, emergent and plural understanding of learning spaces. We take an ecological perspective on learning, which allows us to conceptualize learning spaces as (co-)constructed by learners; emerging through learners' practices, interactions and activities; and facilitated by pedagogical…

An increasing number of countries have recently included programming education in their curricula. Similarly, utilizing programming concepts in gameplay has become popular in the videogame industry. Although many games have been developed for learning to program, their variety and their correspondence to national curricula remain an uncharted…

Although there is wide rhetoric that programming should be learnt by all as an element of computational thinking (CT), in practice, it is mostly implemented narrowly as an end in itself consisting of routine practice and traditional testing of the ability to code. This paper discusses a way in which programming could be seen through a wider…

The ability to code computer programs is considered an important part of literacy in today's society. This paper reports from a case study in two sixth-grade classes where Scratch coding was part of six mathematics lessons. The aim of the study was to investigate how Scratch coding affected students' interest development in coding and in…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) attract learners with a variety of backgrounds. Engaging them using game development was trialled in a beginner's programming course, "Begin programming: build your first mobile game," on FutureLearn platform. The course has completed two iterations: first in autumn 2013 and second in spring 2014 with…

This paper presents the results of a systematic review of the literature, including a meta-analysis, about the effectiveness of the use of Alice software in programming learning when compared to the use of a conventional programming language. Our research included studies published between the years 2000 and 2014 in the main databases. We gathered…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of goal specificity and scaffolding on the programming performance and self-regulation of elementary students engaged in learning game design. This study recruited 232 students for the experimental activities. Two levels of goal specificity were employed: specific and nonspecific.…

Although past research has sought to identify the factors of student engagement in traditional online courses, two questions remained largely unanswered with regard to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): do the factors that could influence student engagement in traditional online courses also apply to online courses that are massive and open?…

Serious virtual worlds (SVWs) represent a great opportunity for learning and should embed a lot of high-quality contextualised information so that the player can take the most from his or her exploration of the environment. This requires defining new methodologies and tools for effective production. We have investigated this issue in implementing…

This paper examines the effective deployment of conversational agents in virtual worlds from the perspective of researchers/practitioners in cognitive psychology, computing science, learning technologies and engineering. From a cognitive perspective, the major challenge lies in the coordination and management of the various channels of information…

In the conventional English as a Second Language (ESL) class-based learning environment, teachers use a fixed learning sequence and content for all students without considering the diverse needs of each individual. There is a great deal of diversity within and between classes. Hence, if students' learning outcomes are to be maximised, it is…

It is of course very difficult to accurately project important characteristics of the future state of any rapidly evolving field, and the field of authoring systems for computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is no exception. However, strong trends in evolving CAI systems of today would seem to indicate some important characteristics of the software…

This paper discusses Svetovid, cross-platform software that helps instructors to assess the amount of effort put into practical exercises and exams in courses related to computer programming. The software was developed as an attempt at solving problems associated with practical exercises and exams. This paper discusses the design and use of…