Introductory programming courses (CS1) are difficult for novices. Inspired by "Problem solving followed by instruction" and "Productive Failure" approaches, we define an original "necessity-driven" learning design. Students are put in an apparently well-known situation, but this time they miss an essential ingredient…

Novice programmers, who have yet to form effective mental models of the domain, often experience high cognitive load, low confidence, and high anxiety, negatively affecting learning and retention rates. These cognitive and affective limitations pose an instructional challenge. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a whole-task…

Over the last 10 years, learning analytics have provided educators with both dashboards and tools to understand student behaviors within specific technological environments. However, there is a lack of work to support educators in making data-informed design decisions when designing a blended course and planning appropriate learning activities. In…

Reintroducing computer science (CS) education in K-12 schools to promote computational thinking (CT) has attracted significant attention among scholars and educators. Among the several essential components included in CS and CT education, program debugging is an indispensable skill. However, debugging teaching has often been overlooked in K-12…

Background: Problem-solving is a multidimensional and dynamic process that requires and interlinks cognitive, metacognitive, and affective dimensions of learning. However, current approaches practiced in computing education research (CER) are not sufficient to capture information beyond the basic programming process data (i.e., IDE-log data).…

Programming is a complex learning activity that involves coordination of cognitive processes and affective states. These aspects are often considered individually in computing education research, demonstrating limited understanding of how and when students learn best. This issue confines researchers to contextualize evidence-driven outcomes when…

The recent shift in compulsory education from ICT-focused computing curricula to informatics, digital literacy and computer science, has resulted in children being taught computing using block-based programming tools such as Scratch, with teaching that is often limited by school resources and teacher expertise. Even without these limitations,…

It is becoming increasingly necessary for every child to have experience with 21st century Computational Thinking (CT) skills including learning to program. Considerable efforts have been made within the last two decades including the development and widespread use of novice-friendly block-based programming environments such as Scratch and Snap!…

Nowadays we need to teach students how to become flexible problem solvers in a dynamic world. The pace in which technology changes and complexity increases requires increased efficiency in learning and understanding. This requires the engineers of tomorrow to quickly gain knowledge and insight outside their prime area of expertise. To transfer…

This paper reports on a series of introductory programming workshops, initially targeting female high school students, which utilised Lego Mindstorms robots. Cognitive load theory (CLT) was applied to the instructional design of the workshops, and a controlled experiment was also conducted investigating aspects of the interface. Results indicated…

This study investigated the effects of visual cues in multiple external representations (MER) environment on the learning performance of novices' program comprehension. Program codes and flowchart diagrams were used as dual representations in multimedia environment to deliver lessons on C-Programming. 17 field independent participants and 16 field…

Assigning difficulty level indicators to the knowledge units helps the learners plan their learning activities more efficiently. This paper focuses on how to use the topology of a knowledge map to compute and rank the difficulty levels of knowledge units. Firstly, the authors present the hierarchical structure and properties of the knowledge map.…

The level of learners' expertise has been used as a metric and diagnostic mechanism of instruction. This metric influences mental effort directly according to the applications of cognitive load theory. Cognitive efficiency, an optimal measurement technique of expertise, was developed by Kalyuga and Sweller to replace instructional efficiency in…

This paper presents a goal-based scenario approach to teaching introductory database concepts to undergraduates using two different scaffolding methods. One method, termed "worked-out examples," attempts to reduce extraneous cognitive load by requiring students to complete increasingly complex missing parts of worked out examples. The other…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…