Reduction is a problem-solving strategy, relevant to various areas of computer science, and strongly connected to abstraction: a reductive solution necessitates establishing a connection among problems that may seem totally disconnected at first sight, and abstracts the solution to the reduced-to problem by encapsulating it as a black box. The…

Systems that automatically assess student programming assignments have been designed and used for over forty years. Systems that objectively test and mark student programming work were developed simultaneously with programming assessment in the computer science curriculum. This article reviews a number of influential automatic assessment systems,…

In the summer of 2003, a project to augment and improve the teaching of information assurance courses was started at IUP. Thus far, ten hands-on exercises have been developed. The exercises described in this article, and presented in the appendix, are based on actions required to secure a Linux host. Publicly available resources were used to…

With the development of XML Web Services, the Internet could become an integral part of and the basis for teaching computer science and software engineering. The approach has been applied to a university course for students studying introduction to computer science from the point of view of software development in a stateless, Internet…

Closed laboratories are becoming an increasingly popular approach to teaching introductory computer science courses, as they facilitate structured problem-solving and cooperation. However, most closed laboratories have been designed and implemented without embedded instructional research components for constant evaluation of the laboratories'…