Educational technologists and practitioners have made substantial strides in developing affordable digital and tangible resources to support both formal and informal computer science instruction. However, there is a lack of research on practice-based assignments, such as Internet of Things (IoT) projects, that allow undergraduate students to…

Human beings by nature have a predisposition towards learning and the exploration of the natural world. We are intrinsically intellectual and social beings knitted with adaptive cognitive architectures. As Foot (2014) succinctly sums it up: "humans act collectively, learn by doing, and communicate in and via their actions" and they…

Educational robotics (ER) seems to have a positive effect on students and, in many cases, might help them to successfully assimilate knowledge and skills. Thus, this paper focuses on ER and carries out a literature review on educational robotics simulators with Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). The review searches for relevant papers which were…

This paper reports on CodeOrama, a visualization tool that displays the entire source code in a two-dimensional representation created to support the representation of a complex code in block-based programming environments, like Scratch, by using a two-dimension table. CodeOrama can be used by the students for the development of their programs as…

The study aims to compare the effect of a structured versus an unstructured educational robotics (ER) curriculum on (a) the frequency and type of programming errors made by students in block-based programming, (b) their ability to debug a programme, and (c) their engagement in the learning process. The authors' hypothesis is that, in programming…

The GeomBot is a drawing robot that combines the well-known strengths and opportunities offered by Scratch with those of Papert's original robotic drawing-turtle. In this study we look at the GeomBot as a physical programmable artifact around which action research with a group of teachers and a researcher was carried out with the aim of designing,…

Remote robotics laboratories have been successfully used for engineering education. However, few of them use mobile robots to to teach computer science. This article describes a mobile robot Control and Programming Environment (CPE) and its pedagogical applications. The system comprises a remote laboratory for robotics, an online programming tool,…

In the training of future informatics teachers the students obtain experience with different methods of programming. As well, the students become familiar with programming by using the robotic system Lego Mindstorms. However, the small number of Lego systems available is a limiting factor for the teaching process. Use of virtual robotic…

Teaching the fundamentals of robotics to computer science undergraduates requires designing a well-balanced curriculum that is complemented with hands-on applications on a platform that allows rapid construction of complex robots, and implementation of sophisticated algorithms. This paper describes such an elective introductory course where the…

With the current curriculum focus on correlating classroom problem solving lessons to real-world contexts, are LEGO robotics an effective problem solving tool? This present study was designed to investigate this question and to ascertain what problem solving strategies primary students engaged with when working with LEGO robotics and whether the…

Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a new computing paradigm that has been adopted by major computer companies as well as government agencies such as the Department of Defense for mission-critical applications. SOC is being used for developing Web and electronic business applications, as well as robotics, gaming, and scientific applications. Yet,…