Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become hugely popular recently. MOOCs can offer high-quality education for anyone interested and equalize the whole education field. Still, there are different methodologies for running MOOCs. Coming up with the most suitable methodology benefits both students and teachers. In this study, we have limited…

Object-oriented programming distinguishes between instance attributes and methods and class attributes and methods, annotated by the "static" modifier. Novices encounter difficulty understanding the means and implications of "static" attributes and methods. The paper has two outcomes: (a) a detailed classification of aspects of…

Concurrency is often perceived as difficult by students. One reason for this may be due to the fact that abstractions used in concurrent programs leave more situations undefined compared to sequential programs (e.g., in what order statements are executed), which makes it harder to create a proper mental model of the execution environment. Students…

The principles of programming language design for learning and teaching have been described and discussed for several decades. Most influential was the work of Niklaus Wirth, describing principles such as simplicity, modularity, orthogonality, and readability. So why is this still an area of fundamental disagreement among educators? Why can…

This research investigates university students' success in their first programming course (CS1) in relation to their motivation, mathematical ability, programming self-efficacy, and initial goal setting. To our knowledge, these constructs have not been measured in a single study before in the Finnish context. The selection of the constructs is in…

This autoethnographic paper is part of a special issue trying to answer the question "How to design or choose languages for programming novices?" I will describe how my programming language Hedy was created, how the initial design goals were formed, how my perspectives on learning and teaching changed along the way, and how Hedy changed…

This paper presents the first experiences of the use of an online open-source repository with programming exercises. The repository is independent of any specific teaching approach. Students can search for and select an exercise that trains the programming concepts that they want to train and that only uses the programming concepts they already…

Programming is one of the basic subjects in most informatics, computer science mathematics and technical faculties' curricula. Integrated overview of the models for teaching programming, problems in teaching and suggested solutions were presented in this paper. Research covered current state of 1019 programming subjects in 715 study programmes at…

The primary purpose of this study is to investigate CT skills development process in learning environments. It is also aimed to determine the conceptual understanding and measurement approaches in the studies. To achieve these aims, a systematic research review methodology was implemented as the research design. Empirical studies on computational…

Problem solving skills are considered an important component in learning to program in an introductory programming (IP) course for novices. This study introduced a PROSOLVE game to enhance problem solving skills of novice programmers in the introductory programming course. The game is based on pseudo-code technique. A survey was employed to…

The paper elaborates on experiences and lessons learned from the course on object-oriented analyses and design at the Faculty of Sciences, Novi Sad. The course on OOAD is taught to students of computer science and to the students of mathematical programme. Conclusions made in this paper are based on results of students' assignments as well as…

Research on the effectiveness of introductory programming environments often relies on post-test measures and attitudinal surveys to support its claims; but such instruments lack the ability to identify any explanatory mechanisms that can account for the results. This paper reports on a study designed to address this issue. Using Noss and Hoyles'…

This paper presents results of a questionnaire focused on investigating students' confidence and behavioral intention in the area of programming, particularly that of structures, problem solving, and programming commands (Conditional--Loop). Responses from 116 1st year students regarding informatics were used. The results indicate that the…

There are many important issues in informatics and many agree that algorithms and programming are most important issues that need to be included in informatics education (Dagiene and Jevsikova, 2012). In this paper, we propose how some of these issues can be easily taught using the notion of a formal system which consists of axioms and inference…

Students' performances in introductory programming courses show large variation across students. There may be many reasons for these variations, such as methods of teaching, teacher competence in the subject, students' coding backgrounds and abilities, students' self-discipline, the teaching environment, and the resources available to students,…