Understanding the architecture of a processor can be uninteresting and deterring for computer science students, since low-level details of computer architecture are often perceived to lack real-world impact. These courses typically have a strong practical component where students learn the fundamentals of the computer architecture and the handling…

We argue that understanding the cognitive foundations of computational thinking will assist educators to improve children's learning in computing. We explain the conceptual relationship between executive functions and aspects of computational thinking. We present initial empirical data from 23 eleven year old learners which investigates the…

Computational thinking (CT) has been introduced in primary schools worldwide. However, rich classroom-based evidence and research on how to assess and support students' CT through programming are particularly scarce. This empirical study investigates 4th grade students' (N = 57) CT in a comparatively comprehensive and fine-grained manner by…

Background and Context: Encouraging undergraduate programming students to think more about their software development processes is challenging. Most programming courses focus on coding skill development and mastering programming language features; subsequently software development processes (e.g. planning, code commenting, and error debugging) are…

This study explores students' cognitive processes while debugging programs by using an eye tracker. Students' eye movements during debugging were recorded by an eye tracker to investigate whether and how high- and low-performance students act differently during debugging. Thirty-eight computer science undergraduates were asked to debug two C…

This study discusses and presents various strategies employed by novice programmers concerning exception handling. The main contributions of this paper are as follows: we provide an analysis tool to measure the level of assimilation of exception handling mechanism; we present and analyse strategies to handle exceptions; we present and analyse…

Debugging is often difficult and frustrating for novices. Yet because students typically debug outside the classroom and often in isolation, instructors rarely have the opportunity to closely observe students while they debug. This paper describes the details of an exploratory study of the debugging skills and behaviors of contemporary novice Java…