Background: With the development of computational literacy, there has been a surge in both research and practice application of text-based and block-based modalities within the field of computer programming education. Despite this trend, little work has actually examined how learners engaging in programming process when utilizing these two major…

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…

The advent of the high-throughput next-generation sequencing produced a large number of biological data. Knowledge discovery from the huge amount of available biological data requires researchers to develop solid skills in biology and computer science. As the majority of the Bioinformatics professionals are either computer science or life sciences…

The use of Scratch programming in introducing text-based programming to novices at all levels of education has gained prominence in computer science but is still hardly known among pre-service teachers. With affordances of Scratch in learning text-based programming, we present an experience report on how we supported our first-year pre-service…

Many introductory computer science (CS) courses are intended to address the increased demand for computer literacy and the development of cross-cutting concepts and practices of computational thinking (CT). Colleges and universities offer introductory CS courses every semester toward this end. The issue is centered on how to support CT learning in…

In this study, a predictive model is constructed to analyze learners' performance in programming tasks using data of programming behavioral events and behavioral sequences. First, this study identifies behavioral events from log data and applies lag sequence analysis to extract behavioral sequences that reflect learners' programming strategies.…

Chess programming is an old and venerable branch of game development. In the modern computing environment, it encompasses the development of chess engines, chess user interfaces (UIs), chess tournament broadcast tools, chess databases, endgame tablebases (EGTBs) and opening books. In this paper, the author shares his multi-year experience of…

Digital skills are beneficial for young people and society, but some individuals, particularly girls, are less likely to choose computing post-compulsory education. Coding is a crucial skill in the school computing curriculum. The authors collected survey data from 4983 secondary-school students (ages 11-16) as well as conducted exploratory factor…

As a novice, learning computer programming is challenging. It requires learners to be inquisitive and acquire skills to analyze problems to get to solutions critically. Unfortunately, students drop out of programming courses because students think that programming is difficult to understand. The student's understanding of the problem definition is…

Computer programming has been gradually emphasized in recent computer literacy education and regarded as a requirement for all middle school students in some countries. To understand young students' perceptions about their own learning in computer programming, this study aimed to develop an instrument, Computer Programming Self-Efficacy Scale…

Computer use has become a fact of life, especially for children, many of whom were forced to switch to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and resorted to digital hobbies as a safety measure. Further the amount of time children spend on computers, as well as the number of different computer devices that pervade our post-pandemic society…

Computational thinking in physics has many different forms, definitions, and implementations depending on the level of physics or the institution it is presented in. To better integrate computational thinking in introductory physics, we need to understand what physicists find important about computational thinking in introductory physics. We…

In the last years, a growing trend in different educational contexts focused on Computational Thinking (CT) skills acquisition for both in-service teachers and students. But very low attention has been paid to pre-service teachers' education in regards to CT skills. To solve this issue, an empirical experimentation has been carried out with 141…

In this dissertation, I argue that web development can play a pivotal role in developing computational thinking as well as provide a stepping stone to an advanced mastery of computation. The preceding literature has extensively examined not only how learners practice computational thinking with a wide array of programming languages, but also how…

Computational thinking (CT) involves breaking a problem into smaller components and solving it using algorithmic thinking and abstraction. CT is no longer exclusively for computer scientists but for everyone. While CT does not necessarily require programming, learning programming to enhance CT skills at a young age can help shape the next…