Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a new computing paradigm that has been adopted by major computer companies as well as government agencies such as the Department of Defense for mission-critical applications. SOC is being used for developing Web and electronic business applications, as well as robotics, gaming, and scientific applications. Yet,…

Expert programmers possess schemas, abstractions of concrete experiences, which help them solve programming problems and lessen the load on their working memory during problem solving. Possession of schemas is a key difference between novices and experts, which is why instructors need to help students construct them. One recent tool for…

Although pair programming has proved its usefulness in teaching and learning programming skills, it is difficult to assess the individual roles and abilities of students whilst programming in pairs. (Note that within this manuscript, the term assessment refers to evaluating individual student performance.) Assessing only the outcomes of a pair…

Professional programmers need common coding conventions to assure co-operation and a degree of quality of the software. Novice programmers, however, easily forget issues of programming style in their programming coursework. In particular with large classes, students may pass several courses without learning elements of programming style. This is…