Contribution: This study evaluates the generalizability of previously identified perceptions among engineering students of assessments in introductory programming (CS1). The students' perceptions of their instructors' and teaching assistants' (TAs) roles in these assessments are also studied, and differences based on prior programming experience,…

Contribution: Findings are provided from an initial survey to evaluate the magnitude of the recursion problem from the student point of view. Background: A major difficulty that programming students must overcome--the learning of recursion--has been addressed by many authors, using various approaches, but none have considered how students perceive…

Nowadays, considerable attention is paid to agile methods as a means to improve management of software development processes. The widespread use of such methods in professional contexts has encouraged their integration into software engineering training and undergraduate courses. Although several research efforts have focused on teaching Scrum…

The results presented in this paper contribute to research on two different areas of teaching methods: distributed pair programming (DPP) and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). An evaluation study of a DPP system that supports collaboration scripts was conducted over one semester of a computer science course. Seventy-four students…

This paper describes the development of BOLE, a MATLAB-based interactive learning environment, that facilitates the process of learning bio-inspired optimization algorithms, and that is dedicated exclusively to unmanned aerial vehicle path planning. As a complement to conventional teaching methods, BOLE is designed to help students consolidate the…

Computer science (CS) is becoming an increasingly diverse domain. This paper reports on an initiative designed to introduce underrepresented populations to computing using an eclectic, multifaceted approach. As part of a yearlong computing course, students engage in Maker activities, participatory simulations, and computing projects that…

Students' ratings of teaching quality on course units in a computer science program and an environmental engineering program at a large Swedish university were obtained using the Course Experience Questionnaire; 8888 sets of ratings were obtained from men and 4280 sets were obtained from women over ten academic years. These student ratings from…

Deliberate practice is important in many areas of learning, including that of learning to program computers. However, beliefs about the nature of personal traits, known as "mindsets," can have a profound impact on such practice. Previous research has shown that those with a "fixed mindset" believe their traits cannot change;…

The interdisciplinary nature of robotics allows mobile robots to be used successfully in a broad range of courses at the postgraduate level and in Ph.D. research. Practical industrial-like mobile robotic demonstrations encourage students and increase their motivation by providing them with learning benefits not achieved with traditional…

System stability is a basic concept in courses on dynamic system analysis and control for undergraduate students with computer science backgrounds. Typically, this was taught using a simple simulation example of an inverted pendulum. Unfortunately, many difficult issues arise in the learning and understanding of the concepts of stability,…

This paper describes a virtual system that emulates an ARM-based processor machine, created to replace a traditional hardware-based system for teaching assembly language. The virtual system proposed here integrates, in a single environment, all the development tools necessary to deliver introductory or advanced courses on modern assembly language…

The "open hardware mobile manipulator" (OHMM) is a new open platform with a unique combination of features for teaching robotics software and algorithms. On-board low- and high-level processors support real-time embedded programming and motor control, as well as higher-level coding with contemporary libraries. Full hardware designs and…

This paper explores the educational benefits of introducing the aspect-oriented programming paradigm into a programming course in a study on a sample of 75 undergraduate software engineering students. It discusses how using the aspect-oriented paradigm, in addition to the object-oriented programming paradigm, affects students' programs, their exam…

The exponential growth of advancing technologies is pushing curriculum designers in computer engineering (CpE) education to compress more and more content into the typical 4-year program, without necessarily paying much attention to the cohesiveness of those contents. The result has been highly fragmented curricula consisting of various…

This paper presents an analysis of introducing active methodologies in the Computer Architecture course taught in the second year of the Computer Engineering Bachelor's degree program at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain. The paper reports the experience from three academic years, 2011-2012, 2012-2013, and 2013-2014, in which…