Many middle school students come to Computer Science (CS) classes without any previous CS instruction or any Computational Thinking (CT) skills that are needed to be successful. To overcome this, many curriculums and programming environments have been used to engage students and to instill a love of CS. Which curriculum should be used to develop…

Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in higher education institutions and the technology field and vulnerable to attrition. The reviewed literature suggests that the impact of other factors, beyond students' academic performance, leading to well-being and success and affecting female students' retention…

Modern higher education institutions must contend with a litany of cyber threats, regulations, and environmental dynamics. These institutions are increasingly being targeted due to the value of the data they possess and their historically permissive configurations that are intended to support academic freedom. Many universities are implementing…

The 2012 report by the US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) predicts a deficit in the workforce for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the following decade and emphasizes the importance of addressing this shortfall. According to the report, less than half of the three million students…

Hackathons, the time-bound collaborative project-based competitions increasingly popular with undergraduate CS students, are both transformative and problematic. On one hand, they are unique opportunities to apply skills learned in the classroom to real-world, interest driven projects that celebrate risk taking, collaboration, and playfulness. On…

Recent policies and initiatives emphasized the importance of helping all students acquire Computer Science (CS) knowledge and develop Computational Thinking (CT). This study investigated the impact of a school-university partnership model on school students' CT development in the context of an after-school program. This study also examined the…

There has been a steady decline of majors in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ("STEM majors"). In an effort to improve recruitment and retention in "STEM" majors, an active-learning methodology--"peer-led team learning" ("PLTL")--was implemented by the participating…

According to industry representatives, computer science education needs to emphasize the processes involved in solving computing problems rather than their solutions. Most of the current assessment tools used by universities and computer science departments analyze student answers to problems rather than investigating the processes involved in…

Financial institutions are increasingly finding difficulty defending against information security risks and threats, as they are often the number one target for information thieves. An effective information security training and awareness program can be a critical component of protecting an organization's information assets. Many financial…

Almost all collegiate programs in Computer Science offer an introductory course in programming primarily devoted to communicating the foundational principles of software design and development. The ACM designates this introduction to computer programming course for first-year students as CS1, during which methodologies for solving problems within…

Programming is recognized as being challenging for teachers to teach and difficult for students to learn. For decades, computer science educators have looked at innovative approaches by creating pedagogical software tools that attempt to facilitate both the teaching of and the learning of programming. This dissertation investigates the motivations…

Targeted email attacks to enable computer network exploitation have become more prevalent, more insidious, and more widely documented in recent years. Beyond nuisance spam or phishing designed to trick users into revealing personal information, targeted malicious email (TME) facilitates computer network exploitation and the gathering of sensitive…

Many students experience difficulties learning to program. They find learning to program in the object-oriented paradigm particularly challenging. As a result, computing educators have tried a variety of instructional methods to assist beginning programmers. These include developing approaches geared specifically toward novices and experimenting…

Girls and women continue to be underrepresented in high school Advanced Placement computer science courses, undergraduate and graduate computer science programs at colleges and universities, and engineering programs and related careers. This is not to suggest that public schools train students to fulfill specific job needs, yet it is evident that…

This study provides information for higher education leaders that have or are considering conducting Computer Aided Design (CAD) instruction using student owned notebook computers. Survey data were collected during the first 8 years of a pilot program requiring engineering technology students at a four year public university to acquire a notebook…