Unified Modelling Language (UML) class diagrams are standard tools in software engineering education, typically analysed for syntactical correctness rather than their communicative dimensions. This study applies semiotic theory to investigate how first-year Bachelor of Computer Information Systems students engage with UML class diagrams as…

When the new programming language Pascal was developed in the 1970's, Walter Gander did not like it because because many features which he appreciated in prior programming languages were missing in Pascal. For example the block structure was gone, there were no dynamical arrays, no functions or procedures were allowed as parameters of a procedure,…

Background and context: There were few studies indicating if students' computational thinking (CT) self-efficacy and their CT performance were aligned with each other. Objectives: The study was to investigate if there was a discrepancy between students' CT self-efficacy and their CT performance. Method: Involving 104 non-CS undergraduate students…

This paper discusses the steps involve in project development for developing the mobile application, namely Blood Bank Application and developing the convertor for software testing. The project development is important for Computer Science students for them to learn the important steps in developing the application and testing the reliability of…

The HCS12 microcontroller and DRAGON12-Light Trainer boards are extensively utilized in microprocessor system design education. This paper details the rationale, approach, and outcomes from implementing the DRAGON12-Light Trainer board in teaching an upper-level undergraduate microprocessors course at Oakland University. The course's primary goal…

Scientific programming has become increasingly essential for manipulating, visualizing, and interpreting the large volumes of data acquired in earth science research. Yet few discipline-specific instructional approaches have been documented and assessed for their effectiveness in equipping geoscience undergraduate students with coding skills. Here…

This paper systematically explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) generate explanations of code examples of the type used in intro-to-programming courses. As we show, the nature of code explanations generated by LLMs varies considerably based on the wording of the prompt, the target code examples being explained, the programming language, the…

Purpose: This study investigates the impact of AI-assisted pair programming on undergraduate students' intrinsic motivation, programming anxiety, and performance, relative to both human-human pair programming and individual programming approaches. Methods: A quasi-experimental design was conducted over two academic years (2023-2024) with 234…

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…

Teaching software engineering (SWE) as a core computer science course (ACM, 2013) is a challenging task. The challenge lies in the emphasis on what a large-scale software means, implementing teamwork, and teaching abstraction in software design while simultaneously engaging students into reasonable coding tasks. The abstraction of the system…

Worked examples, which present an explained code for solving typical programming problems are among the most popular types of learning content in programming classes. Most approaches and tools for presenting these examples to students are based on line-by-line explanations of the example code. However, instructors rarely have time to provide…

Computer programming skills have been growing as a professional competence also to unqualified end-users who need to develop software in their professional practice. Quality evaluation models of end-user-developed products are still scarce. In this paper, we propose a metric that leverages "When", a condition typically found in…

This study aims to provide a descriptive and bibliometric analysis of the trend of artificial intelligence (AI) application in the development of computational thinking (CT) skills in publications from 2007 to 2024. A total of 191 articles were obtained from Scopus database with certain keywords, and analyzed using Biblioshiny and VOSviewer. The…

Background and Context: We explore the potential for understanding the processes involved in students' programming based on studying their behaviour and dialogue with each other and "conversations" with their programs. Objective: Our aim is to explore how a perspective of inquiry can be used as a point of departure for insights into how…

The automatic code generation is the process of generating source code snippets from a program, i.e., code for generating code. Its importance lies in facilitating software development, particularly important is helping in the implementation of software designs such as engineering diagrams, in such a case, automatic code generation copes with the…