Previous studies have shown that students with low knowledge understand and learn better from more cohesive texts, whereas high-knowledge students have been shown to learn better from texts of lower cohesion. This study examines whether high-knowledge readers in computer science benefit from a text of low cohesion. Undergraduate students (n = 65)…

In view of the strong growth of transnational education programmes in Australian universities, there is growing interest in the experiences of students participating in such programmes. This article reports on the perceived student satisfaction with several aspects of their transnational programmes, including instructors, technology, and programme…

In this paper, we present the results from a two-part study. We analyze 60 programs written by novice programmers aged 16-19 after their first programming course, in either Java or Python. The aim is to find difficulties independent of the language used, and such originating from the language. Second, we analyze the transition from a…

This article describes research on the learning of object-oriented programming (OOP) by novices. During two academic years, we taught OOP to high school students, using Java and BlueJ. Our approach to teaching featured: objects-first, teaching composed classes relatively early, deferring the teaching of main methods, and focusing on class…