Background and Context: Students learning the C programming language struggle to debug, and to understand the runtime behaviour of, their programs. Objective: We examine a tool that combines several novice-focused error detection, program visualization, and debugging techniques, to investigate which features students use in real study sessions,…

This study explores student perceptions of learning to code by evaluating AI-generated Python code. In an experimental exercise given to students in an introductory Python course at a business university, students wrote their own solutions to a Python program and then compared their solutions with AI-generated code. They evaluated both solutions…

Background: Effective learning in computer programming courses has been a constant challenge for university teachers and has become a relevant competence for current professionals. The literature on gamification in learning presents mixed results, mainly due to problems in instructional design and inconsistency in gamification. Studies with…

Teachers deal with plagiarism on a regular basis, so they try to prevent and detect plagiarism, a task that is complicated by the large size of some classes. Students who cheat often try to hide their plagiarism (obfuscate), and many different similarity detection engines (often called plagiarism detection tools) have been built to help teachers.…

Contribution: Reporting of students' view on the use of preparatory sprint and virtual meetings, as well as on the workload effort in combination with coding artifacts in a Scrum-variant project-based course. Background: Scrum has been adopted to a large extent in Software Engineering (SE) courses. Relevant aspects have been examined in the…

ChatGPT, an AI-based chatbot with automatic code generation abilities, has shown its promise in improving the quality of programming education by providing learners with opportunities to better understand the principles of programming. However, limited empirical studies have explored the impact of ChatGPT on learners' programming processes. This…

Background: The degree to which Computer Science (CS) and Information Communication Technology (ICT) students are motivated to learn greatly impacts their study habits, academic achievement in school and ultimately their job prospects. In recent times, skills in programming languages have become vital in searching for employment. Objective: This…

As computational thinking becomes increasingly essential, the challenge of designing effective teaching approaches to foster students' abilities in this area persists, especially for higher order thinking skills. This study addresses this challenge by proposing and implementing a peer assessment-based Scrum project (PA-SP) learning approach in…

Automatically identifying struggling students learning to program can assist teachers in providing timely and focused help. This work presents a new deep-learning language model for predicting "bug-fix-time", the expected duration between when a software bug occurs and the time it will be fixed by the student. Such information can guide…

Learning basic programming concepts in computer science-related fields poses a challenge for students, to the extent that it becomes an academic-social problem, resulting in high failure and dropout rates. Proposed solutions to the problem can be found in the literature, such as the development of new programming languages and environments, the…

Purpose: Programming education is being rapidly transformed by generative AI tools and educators must determine how best to support students in this context. This study aims to explore the experiences of programming educators and students to inform future education provision. Design/methodology/approach: Twelve students and six members of faculty…

Aim/Purpose: Multi-threaded software design is considered to be difficult, especially to novice programmers. In this study, we explored how students cope with a task that its solution requires a multi-threaded architecture to achieve optimal runtime. Background: An efficient exploit of multicore processors architecture requires computer programs…

This paper presents the Screencast-Based Assessment Technique (SBAT) for a mobile app development curriculum in the information systems discipline. SBAT was implemented as a midterm take-home exam in which students design and develop an app project based on their own interests, passions, or ambitions. In addition to coding, students must create…

Background and Context: In spite of the decades spent developing software visualization (SV), doubts still remain regarding their effectiveness. Furthermore, student engagement plays an important role in improving SV effectiveness as it is correlated with many positive academic outcomes. It has been shown that the existing SV has failed to engage…

The study is aimed at solving a problem generated by the necessity to change the organizational forms of digital learning to prepare graduates who meet the requirements of today's labor market; who are equipped with teamwork skills and skills of project-management under uncertainty which are especially relevant nowadays. The purpose of the study…