In the last few years, it has been pointed out that teaching programming is a strong strategy to develop pupils' competences in computational thinking (CT). In the Portuguese context, the curriculum changes in 2018 made programming and CT compulsory for every pupil in primary and secondary education. Nowadays, there is an information and…

An analysis is presented in this study that provides insight into a practical training process and its impact on teachers and their viewpoints toward the integrated STEM approach used in that training process, together with educational coding and robotics, over the first years of compulsory primary education, where STEM implementations are…

In every course, there are learners who successfully pass assessments and complete the course. However, there are also those who fail the course for various reasons. One of such reasons may be related to success in assessment. Although performance in assessments has been studied before, there is a lack of knowledge on the degree of variance…

One of the problems regarding MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) is the high dropout rate. Although dropout periods have been studied, there is still a lack of understanding of how dropout differs for MOOCs with different levels of difficulty. A quantitative study was conducted to determine the periods with the highest dropouts in computer…

This study investigated the scalability of a cognitive multiple-choice test through the Mokken package in the R programming language for statistical computing. A 2019 mathematics West African Examinations Council (WAEC) instrument was used to gather data from randomly drawn K-12 participants (N = 2866; Male = 1232; Female = 1634; Mean age = 16.5…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) can potentially affect the lives of millions of people, but there is little research on how a programming MOOC could affect participants' lives after participation. In Estonia, we have organised several programming MOOCs over the years, attended by over 14,000 people. This inspired us to develop and validate a…

The objective of this research is to study the "Scratch" programming language as a didactic tool to teach functions. The introduction of didactic tools allowing comprehension in simple and attractive ways is required. Given the traditional teaching/learning system, it is necessary to organize participatory and collaborative dynamic…

The introduction of STEM education, and specifically the implementation of educational robotics (ER), has drawn researchers' attention and has shown that teachers play a crucial role in leading this innovation. The present study concerns in-service and pre-service early childhood teachers, focusing on their perceptions and attitudes about ER use…

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,…

In this paper, we present our experience with redesigning an introductory computer science course for (electrical) engineers with blended learning concepts. It is a large mandatory course with eight credit points over the course of two semesters, where first year electrical engineers learn how to program with Arduino, C and Python. Additionally,…

Previous research proved that teaching spreadsheeting from a programming perspective is much more effective than the widely accepted tool-centered surface approach methods. Spreadsheeting as an introductory programming approach allows students to build up schemata leading to contextualized, concept-based problem-solving. Furthermore, it provides…

Digital competence and programming are actively highlighted areas in education worldwide. They are becoming part of curricula all over the world, including the Swedish elementary school curriculum, Children are expected to develop "computational thinking" through programming activities, mainly in mathematics--which are supposed to be…

Immersive technologies are rapidly transforming the field of education. Amongst them, Augmented Reality (AR) has shown promise as a resource, particularly for education in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM). There are, however, few teachers deploying this new medium in the classroom directly, and, consequently, only a…

Educational robotics are commonly present in kindergarten and primary school classrooms, particularly Bee-bot. Its ease of use allows the introduction of computer programming to young children in educational contexts from a science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) perspective. Despite this rise, there are still few…

This study aims to analyze how pre-service informatics teachers design learning scenarios with robotics to teach programming fundamentals and to promote computational thinking skills. A descriptive and exploratory case study design was implemented with 26 pre-service informatics teachers. Data were collected from the participants using qualitative…