Background and Context: Multiple studies report that experienced instructors lack consensus on the difficulty of programming tasks for novices. However, adequately gauging task difficulty is needed for alignment: to select and structure tasks in order to assess what students can and cannot do. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine…

Background and Context: Productive failure (PF) is a learning paradigm that flips the order of instruction: students work on a problem, then receive a lesson. PF increases learning, but less is known about student emotions and collaboration during PF, particularly in a computer science context. Objective: To provide insight on students' emotions…

Objective: This study explores postgraduate students' perceptions of the modified team-based learning instructional approach used to teach it and the extent to which the Bootcamp course improves their practical skills. Method: In the beginning, participants (n = 185) were asked to rate their practical experience on the taught topics. At the end…

Background and Context: A continued gender disparity has driven a need for effective interventions for recruiting girls to computer science. Prior research has demonstrated that middle school girls hold beliefs and attitudes that keep them from learning computer science, which can be mitigated through classroom design. Objective: This study…

Background and Context: Peer code review activities provide well-documented benefits to students in programming courses. Students develop relevant skills through exposure to alternative coding solutions, producing and receiving feedback, and collaboration with peers. Despite these benefits, low student motivation has been identified as one of the…

Background and Context: Encouraging undergraduate programming students to think more about their software development processes is challenging. Most programming courses focus on coding skill development and mastering programming language features; subsequently software development processes (e.g. planning, code commenting, and error debugging) are…

Background and Context: automated feedback for programming assignments has great potential in promoting just-in-time learning, but there has been little work investigating the design of feedback in this context. Objective: to investigate the impacts of different designs of automated feedback on student learning at a fine-grained level, and how…

Background and context: Researchers have been looking into the complexity of computer science (CS) education and tried to apply rigorous and relevant educational research methods to understand and facilitate the learning experience of students. Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore college students' conceptions of learning CS to shed…

Background and Context: Differences in children's and adolescents' initial attitudes about computing and other STEM fields may form during middle school and shape decisions leading to career entry. Early emerging differences in career interest may propagate a lack of diversity in computer science and programming fields. Objective: Though middle…

Background and Context: Researchers and practitioners have begun to incorporate collaboration in programming because of its reported instructional and professional benefits. However, younger students need guidance on how to collaborate in environments that require substantial interpersonal interaction and negotiation. Previous research indicates…

Background and Context: Recursion in binary trees has proven to be a hard topic. There was not much research on enhancing student understanding of this topic. Objective: We present a tutorial to enhance learning through practice of recursive operations in binary trees, as it is typically taught post-CS2. Method: We identified the misconceptions…

Background and Context: Physical computing involves complex negotiations of multiple, on and off-screen tasks, which calls for research on how to best structure collaborative work to ensure equitable learning. Objective: We focus on how pairs self-organized their multi-domain tasks in physical computing, and how their social interactions supported…

Background and Context: Non-traditional training grounds such as coding boot camps that attract a higher proportion of women are important sites for understanding how to broaden participation in computing. Objective: This work aims to help us better understand the women choosing boot camps and their pathways through these camps and into the…

Background and Context: Pair programming is used in classrooms to promote learning and engage a more diverse group of students in computing fields, but little is known about what it looks like in middle school. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine how programming pairs were interacting and about what. Method: Video, audio, and screen…

Programming is an essential skill that many computing students are expected to master. However, programming can be difficult to learn. Successfully interpreting compiler error messages (CEMs) is crucial for correcting errors and progressing toward success in programming. Yet these messages are often difficult to understand and pose a barrier to…