Throughout a programming course, students develop various source code tasks. Using these tasks to track students' progress can provide clues to the strengths and weaknesses found in each learning topic. This practice allows the teacher to intervene in learning in the first few weeks of class and maximize student gains. However, the biggest…

The purpose of this paper is to share the iterative process we used to design a task that elicits causal mechanistic reasoning and how the subsequent student responses can be analyzed. Our goal in this task is to strike a balance between eliciting as much student knowledge as possible without providing so much structure that the answer becomes…

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…

The purpose of this study is to derive a correlation between the technological thinking disposition and the computational thinking ability of gifted students in Korea. The correlation between each element was analyzed by looking at the sub-elements of computational thinking according to the components of technological thinking disposition. The…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the collaborative dialogue patterns of pair programming and their impact on programming self-efficacy and coding performance for both slow- and fast-paced students. Forty-six postgraduate students participated in the study. The students were asked to solve programming problems in pairs; those pairs'…

This paper designs and develops a computer programming learning system for total beginners and those who have no programming experience. The traditional computer programming learning systems require prior knowledge about variables, their types, operators for arithmetic calculations and relational calculations etc., for adopting a wide range of…

The processing of ordinally organized information is a characteristic of both serial-order working memory and numerical cognition. Serial positions of items presented within a list follow an ordinal organization when stored in working memory, whereas numbers are based on an ordinal structure stored in long-term memory. We tested the hypothesis…

Concurrency is a complex to learn topic that is becoming more and more relevant, such that many undergraduate Computer Science curricula are introducing it in introductory programming courses. This paper investigates the combined use of Sonic Pi and Team-Based Learning to mitigate the difficulties in early exposure to concurrency. Sonic Pi, a…

Background: Virtual manipulatives (VMs) are increasingly adopted in inquiry activities. However, the effects of the ratio of mobile device-based VMs to students and external scripts (a guiding structure for prompting group process) provision on group interaction has not been detailed. Objectives: This study proposed four different technology…

This paper uses evidence-centered assessment design (ECD) to structure and analyze a laboratory activity where students collect and represent titration curve data to determine acid strength in terms of molarity and dissociation constant. Following principles of multidimensional learning, the activity prompts students to demonstrate knowledge of…

This research was triggered by the identified need in literature for large-scale studies about the kinds of designs that teachers create for mobile learning (m-learning). These studies require analyses of large datasets of learning designs. The common approach followed by researchers when analyzing designs has been to manually classify them…

Coding is defined as the "process of assigning a code (command/rule)" (http://Techopedia.com) that allows a machine or a person to act or move (McLennan, https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/feb2017/creating-coding-stories-and-games, 2017). Though machines operated by a coding system are common in children's everyday lives, there has…

The notion of algorithm may be perceived in different levels of abstraction. In the lower levels it is an operational set of instructions. In higher levels it may be viewed as an object with properties, solving a problem with characteristics. Novices mostly relate to the lower levels. Yet, higher levels are very relevant for them as well. We…

A basic function of cognition is to detect regularities in sensory input to facilitate the prediction and recognition of future events. It has been proposed that these implicit expectations arise from an internal predictive coding model, based on knowledge acquired through processes such as statistical learning, but it is unclear how different…

Design within primary and secondary schools has been increasingly emphasized over the past decade. As a response to this increased interest, qualitative research examining students' cognitive processes involved in the practices of design has been on the rise. These studies have commonly employed the concurrent think-aloud research methodology to…