As part of curriculum changes in South Africa, an introductory programming language, Scratch, must first be taught before switching to the well-established teaching of Delphi. The nature of programming in Scratch is considerably different from that in Delphi. It was assumed that the teaching of Scratch as introductory programming language could…

Introduction: The research focused on metacognition in a collaborative learning setting. Based on a comprehensive literature study the researchers designed a metacognitive teaching-learning strategy for pair programmers. Our purpose was to investigate the influence of this metacognitive teaching-learning strategy during pair programming in an…

The research reported in this article formed part of an internationally funded project about the empowerment of Information Technology (IT) teachers in economically deprived rural schools in the North-West and KwaZulu-Natal provinces in South Africa. The current paper focused on the use of self-directed metacognitive (SDM) questioning in a pair…

The aim of the research was to determine to what extent students' perceptions of assessment (peer, self, fascilitator and individual) in pair programming situations changed from the beginning to the end of a programming module. In order to achieve this aim, both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. During the quantitative phase…

This paper reports on a qualitative study that examined how pair programming shapes the experience of secondary school girls taking IT as a subject, with respect to their enjoyment of programming and the subject itself. The study involved six Grade 11 girls who were doing solo programming in Grade 10 and pair programming in their following Grade.…

Introduction: This paper examines the persistent problematic issue of engaging business students in teaching computer programming. Studies continue to document challenges in teaching computer programming and various methods have been proposed with varying degrees of success. From an educator's perspective, the concern is how to engage students to…

The Computing Curricula (2005) place Information Systems (IS) at the intersection of exact sciences (e.g. General Systems Theory), technology (e.g. Computer Science), and behavioral sciences (e.g. Sociology). This presents particular challenges for teaching and learning, as future IS professionals need to be equipped with a wide range of…

Computer Programming forms the basis from which most students in the IS/IT discipline launch themselves into further endeavors in the discipline. However, statistical analysis of students' performances in programming related assessments tasks reveals that the mastery of computer programming skills is not easily acquired. This assertion is…

Although pair programming has proved its usefulness in teaching and learning programming skills, it is difficult to assess the individual roles and abilities of students whilst programming in pairs. (Note that within this manuscript, the term assessment refers to evaluating individual student performance.) Assessing only the outcomes of a pair…

We discuss teachers' perception of the use of group work in the Information Technology (IT) classroom. We describe the current situation regarding the implementation of group work in IT classrooms in South Africa as well as the challenges that IT teachers face when implementing group work. This information will be used in further research to…