Diverse initiatives have emerged to popularize the teaching of computing in K-12 mainly through programming. This, however, may not cover other important core computing competencies, such as Software Engineering (SE). Thus, in order to obtain an overview of the state of the art and practice of teaching SE competences in K-12, we carried out a…

Aim/Purpose: The aims of this study were to investigate the feasibility of automatic assessment of programming tasks and to compare manual assessment with automatic assessment in terms of the effect of the different assessment methods on the marks of the students. Background: Manual assessment of programs written by students can be tedious. The…

Due to the fundamental differences between traditional education and massive open online courses (MOOCs), and because of the ever-increasing popularity of the latter, more research is needed to understand current and future trends in MOOCs. Although research in the field has grown rapidly in recent years, one of the main challenges facing…

Background and Context: Learners struggle with conceptual understanding of introductory programming concepts such as variables, expressions, and loops. Objective: We examine whether and how designed activities for conceptual exploration support preliminary engagement with and learning of foundational and often hard-to-grasp programming concepts…

It is a question in many countries whether ICT and application usage should be taught. There are some problems with IT literacy: users do not understand the concepts of a software, they cannot solve problems, and moreover, using applications gives them more problems. Consequently, using ICT seems to slow work down. Experts suggest learning…

Purdue Polytechnic has several locations in the state of Indiana offering students a chance to get a Purdue degree. The Computer and Information Technology (CIT) department offers the CIT degree at three sites in Indiana: Anderson, Columbus and Kokomo. CIT offers several potential majors including Cybersecurity, Network Engineering, Systems…

As mobile devices become prevalent, there is always a need for apps. How hard is it to develop an app, especially a cross-platform app? The paper shares an experience in a project that involved the development of a student services web app that can be run on cross-platform mobile devices. The paper first describes the background of the project,…

Stan is a probabilistic programming language for specifying statistical models. A Stan program imperatively defines a log probability function over parameters conditioned on specified data and constants. As of version 2.14.0, Stan provides full Bayesian inference for continuous-variable models through Markov chain Monte Carlo methods such as the…

This paper intends to illustrate the didactic potential of Python-based Jupyter notebooks in teaching translation technology, machine translation in particular, to translation students. It discusses the basic makeup of Jupyter notebooks and shows how these notebooks can be set up for students who have had little to no prior exposure to the Python…

We present a simple procedure to make an augmented reality app to visualize any chemical 3D model. The molecular structure may be based on crystallographic data or from computational modeling. This guide is made in such a way that no programming skills are needed, and the procedure uses free software and provides a way to visualize 3D structures…

The ability to code computer programs is considered an important part of literacy in today's society. This paper reports from a case study in two sixth-grade classes where Scratch coding was part of six mathematics lessons. The aim of the study was to investigate how Scratch coding affected students' interest development in coding and in…

Analysis of programming process data has become popular in computing education research and educational data mining in the last decade. This type of data is quantitative, often of high temporal resolution, and it can be collected non-intrusively while the student is in a natural setting. Many levels of granularity can be obtained, such as…

The aim of this research is to determine the effects and experiences of the use of digital story design activities in teaching applications of programming on academic achievement, participation, and programming self-efficacy. In the study, which is designed through the mixed method, quasi-experimental design is used in the quantitative dimension.…

This article discusses the design and implementation of a new programming tool for Greek novices as a means to improve introductory programing instruction in Greece. We implemented Koios, a new highly interactive and visual programming tool for Greek novices, based on the body of research in the field of psychology of programming. The main…

This article explores children's development of problem-solving practices through multimodal engagements in digital activities. The study is based on analyses of a video recorded peer group activity in which two children, within the context of a project on computational thinking using the software "Scratch," collaboratively work to solve…