Research on mental model representations developed by programmers during parallel program comprehension is important for informing and advancing teaching methods including model-based learning and visualizations. The goals of the research presented here were to determine: how the mental models of programmers change and develop as they learn…

The relative effectiveness of reflection either through student generation of contrasting cases or through provided contrasting cases is not well-established for adult learners. This paper presents a classroom study to investigate this comparison in a college level Computer Science (CS) course where groups of students worked collaboratively to…

Software vulnerabilities in commercial products are an issue of national importance. The most prevalent breaches are input validation vulnerabilities, and these are easily avoidable. This dissertation contributes to cybersecurity education with a set of hands-on interventions tailored for three CS courses, a set of reflection prompts to encourage…

Background: Academic help-seeking benefits students' achievement, but existing literature either studies important factors in students' selection of all help resources via self-reported surveys or studies their help-seeking behavior in one or two separate help resources via actual help-seeking records. Little is known about whether computing…

In the flipped classroom, students engage in preparatory activities to study the course materials prior to attending teacher-guided sessions. Students' success in the flipped classroom is directly related to their preparation and students tend to change their preparation activity over time. Few studies have investigated why students change their…

Continuing to fill the literature gap, this research replicated and expands a prior study of student performance in database normalization in an introductory database course. The data was collected from four different universities, each having different prerequisite courses for their database course. Student performance on a database normalization…

Transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) students are underrepresented in CS education and have been found to leave the field at higher rates than their counterparts. While there is a great deal of Computer Science (CS) education research focused on other underrepresented groups, it rarely includes those who are TGNC. Overall, there is a dearth…

Background and Context: Pair programming is an important approach to fostering students' programming and collaborative learning skills. However, the empirical findings on pair programming are mixed, especially concerning effective instructional design. Objective: The objective of this literature review is to provide lecturers with systematic…

This study aims to provide recommendations for interaction design to enhance students' task interpretation, as one of the crucial aspects of Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) in online learning environments. Utilizing the Engineering Design Metacognitive Questionnaire (EDMQ), open-ended questions, and in-depth interviews, this study examines the…

To support the workforce gap of skilled cybersecurity professionals, gamified pedagogical approaches for teaching cybersecurity have exponentially grown over the last two decades. During this same period, e-sports developed into a multi-billion dollar industry and became a staple on college campuses. In this work, we explore the opportunity to…

The benefits of service learning in computer and information science (CIS) are believed to be significant, ranging from providing students with real-world experiences to retaining students to positively impacting community partners. Although there are many benefits of service learning, the CIS domain does impose unique costs for integrating…

We present a detailed description of a Cryptography and Computer Security course that has been offered at Knox College for the last 15 years. While the course is roughly divided into two sections, Cryptology and Computer Security, our emphasis here is on the Cryptology section. The course puts the cryptologic material into its historical context…

A disproportionate number of European American male students are enrolled in cyberscience undergraduate degree programs, despite attempts to attract diverse student populations in the field. The purpose of the basic qualitative study was to gain a better understanding on how cyberscience academic experts perceive the challenges related to the…

In computer science education timely help seeking during large programming projects is essential for student success. Help-seeking in typical courses happens in office hours and through online forums. In this research, we analyze students coding activities and help requests to understand the interaction between these activities. We collected…

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…