Objectives: Automatic assessment systems are widely used to provide rapid feedback for students and reduce grading time. Despite the benefits of increased efficiency and improved pedagogical outcomes, an ongoing challenge is mitigating poor student behaviors when interacting with automatic assessment systems including numerous submissions,…

The COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020 necessitated a sudden shift to online learning. Faculty at Saint Michael's College, in Colchester, Vermont (USA), had ten days to re-plan their courses as well as potentially learn new pedagogies, adapt to technology for instruction, and help students adjust to the changes. In addition, faculty needed to…

Audio needs to be recognised as an integral medium capable of extending education's formal and informal, virtual and physical learning spaces. This paper reconsiders the value of educational podcasting through a review of literature and a module case study. It argues that a pedagogical understanding is needed and challenges technology-centred or…

More studies are concentrating on using virtualization-based labs to facilitate computer or network learning concepts. Some benefits are lower hardware costs and greater flexibility in reconfiguring computer and network environments. However, few studies have investigated effective mechanisms for using virtualization fully for collaboration.…

Developments in the education field are affected by numerous, and often conflicting, social, cultural, and economic factors. With the increasing corporatization of education, teaching and learning paradigms are continuously altered. "Deconstructing the Education-Industrial Complex in the Digital Age" is an authoritative reference source…

Advances in technology and changes in educational strategies have resulted in the integration of technology into the classroom. Multimedia instructional tools (MMIT) have been identified as a way to provide student-centered active-learning instructional material to students. MMITs are common in introductory computer applications courses based on…

The challenge of teaching programming in higher education is complicated by problems associated with large class teaching, a prevalent situation in many developing countries. This paper reports on an investigation into the use of a blended learning approach to teaching and learning of programming in a class of more than 200 students. A course and…

This paper presents a CAD (classroom assessment design) of an entry-level undergraduate computer programming course "Computer Programming I". CAD has been the product of a long experience in teaching computer programming courses including teaching "Computer Programming I" 22 times. Each semester, CAD is evaluated and modified…

We present a novel approach to the automated marking of student programming assignments. Our technique quantifies the structural similarity between unmarked student submissions and marked solutions, and is the basis by which we assign marks. This is accomplished through an efficient novel graph similarity measure ("AssignSim"). Our experiments…

This paper presents a low-cost hands-on experiment for a classical undergraduate controls course for non-electrical engineering majors. The setup consists of a small dc electrical motor attached to one of the ends of a light rod. The motor drives a 2-in propeller and allows the rod to swing. Angular position is measured by a potentiometer attached…

The educational culture in most developing countries is lecturer-centred with lecturers as providers of information and students as receivers of information. This approach has impacted on student's ability to seek and create knowledge to support their learning process. A collaborative learning approach that promotes students process of inquiry,…

This study investigated the effects of computer-assisted feedback strategies that have been utilized by university students in a technology education curriculum. Specifically, the study examined the effectiveness of the computer-assisted feedback strategy "Knowledge of Response feedback" (KOR), and the "Knowledge of Correct…

Traditional teaching styles practiced at universities do not generally suit all students' learning styles. For a variety of reasons, students do not always engage in learning in the courses in which they are enrolled. New methods to create and deliver educational material are available, but these do not always improve learning outcomes.…

This work describes a new "Moodle" module developed to give support to the practical content of a basic computer organization course. This module goes beyond the mere hosting of resources and assignments. It makes use of an automatic checking and verification engine that works on the VHDL designs submitted by the students. The module automatically…

Virtual worlds, computer-based simulated environments in which users interact via avatars, provide an opportunity for the highly realistic enactment of real life activities online. Unlike computer games, which have a pre-defined purpose, pay-off structure, and action patterns, virtual worlds can leave many of these elements for users to determine.…