The global shortage of skilled programmers remains a persistent challenge. High dropout rates in introductory programming courses pose a significant obstacle to graduation. Previous studies highlighted learning difficulties in programming students, but their specific weaknesses remained unclear. This gap exists due to the predominant focus on the…

The design of algorithms is one of the hardest topics of high school computer science. This is mainly due to the universality of algorithms as solution methods that guarantee the calculation of a correct solution for all potentially infinitely many instances of an algorithmic problem. The goal of this paper is to present a comprehensible and…

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a widely used programming paradigm in modern software industry. This makes it an essential skill for students in many disciplines to learn. However, OOP is known to be challenging to learn and teach due to its abstract nature. Studies have shown that students often face difficulties and develop misconceptions…

A Prolog program consists of a set of facts and rules rather than imperative statements, commonly used in most other programming languages. Therefore, the Prolog language is used to encode logic, from which the inference engine deduces logical conclusions. In this article, we argue that the use of the Prolog language can be useful to help students…

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a prominent topic in K-12 education recently. However, pedagogical design has remained a major challenge, especially among young learners. Guided by the Zone of Proximal Development theory and AI education research literature, this design-based study proposes an analogy-based pedagogical approach to…

Many students want to enroll in programming courses but fear the challenges ahead. They aspire to design quality systems or games after acquiring related skills but report concerns that programming logic is too difficult to learn because memorization of the syntax is required. Thus, they experience anxiety, are demotivated to learn, and,…

Spark, one of the products offered by MyQ (formerly Plethora), is a game-based platform meticulously designed to introduce students to the foundational concepts of computer science. By navigating through logical challenges, users delve into topics like abstraction, loops, and graph patterns. Setting itself apart from its counterparts, Spark boasts…

Computer science students often evaluate the behavior of the code they write by running it on specific inputs and studying the outputs, and then apply their comprehension to a more general understanding of the code. While this is a good starting point in the student's career, successful graduates must be able to reason analytically about the code…

Learning programming logic remains an obstacle for students from different academic fields. Considered one of the essential disciplines in the field of Science and Technology, it is vital to investigate the new tools or techniques used in the teaching and learning of Programming Language. This work presents a systematic literature review (SLR) on…

Introduction to Computer Science is traditionally the first course that all computer science and software engineering majors take. The course introduces many problem-solving techniques which can be challenging for many freshman students. In order to mitigate some of the issues of this course, we, at the Higher Education Institute, introduced a new…

Three years after Japan integrated "programming" into all elementary school subjects, questions remain on how policy is being put into practice in arts education. This article examines the current state of "programming" - activities addressing a local version of computational thinking - in music, with a focus on Japan's pending…

One of the aspects of programming that novices often struggle with is the understanding of abstract concepts, such as variables, loops, expressions, and especially Boolean operations. This paper aims to explore the effects of programming tools with different degrees of embodiment on learning Boolean operations in elementary school. To this end, 67…

The field of computational thinking (CT) is developing rapidly, reflecting its importance in the global economy. However, most empirical studies have targeted CT in K-12, thus, little attention has been paid to CT in higher education. The present scoping review identifies and summarizes existing empirical studies on CT assessments in…

Teaching modeling in computer science is complicated. Many factors contribute, and are related in diverse ways. We regard some combinations as more successful than others, but we also value diversity, and we struggle to elucidate the relationships and our value structure. Similar remarks apply to the study of biological ecosystems. This…

Computer modeling promotes mechanistic reasoning when learners build and analyze models of complex systems to explore causal mechanisms and use models to generate patterns. StarLogo Nova (SLN), an agent-based modeling (ABM) environment, enables novice programmers to model a system's individual components and investigate its emergent, collective…