Integrated computing curricula combine learning objectives in computing with those in another discipline, like literacy, math, or science, to give all students experience with computing, typically before they must decide whether to take standalone CS courses. One goal of integrated computing curricula is to provide an accessible path to an…

Students face several difficulties in introductory programming courses (CS1), often leading to high dropout rates, student demotivation, and lack of interest. The literature has indicated that the adequate use of gamification might improve learning in several domains, including CS1. However, the understanding of which (and how) factors influence…

Computer science is a fast-growing field in today's digitized age, and working in this industry often requires creativity and innovative thought. An issue within computer science education, however, is that large introductory programming courses often involve little opportunity for creative thinking within coursework. The undergraduate…

Interdisciplinarity has been touted as a means to recruit more racially and gender-diverse students to computing. In this explanatory sequential mixed-methods study, we investigated demographic characteristics among a sample of undergraduate students pursuing interdisciplinary computing major and minor combinations at 15 institutions in the United…

We propose a framework for identifying, organizing, and communicating learning objectives that involve program semantics. In this framework, detailed learning objectives are written down as rules of program behavior (RPBs). RPBs are teacher-facing statements that describe what needs to be learned about the behavior of a specific sort of programs.…

Two studies investigated change in computer science (CS) students' implicit intelligence beliefs. Across both studies, we found that the strength of incremental and entity beliefs changed across time. In Study 1, we found that incremental beliefs decreased and entity beliefs increased across the semester. Change in implicit intelligence beliefs…

A common belief among students is that computing is a boring subject that lacks a connection to the real world. The first class (one 80-minute session) in an introductory computer science course may be an appropriate instance to combat such a belief. Previous studies have used course-wide interventions, e.g., games and physical/tangible devices to…

Computer science (CS) has been identified as one of the fastest-growing professions, with demand for CS professionals far outpacing the supply of CS graduates. The necessity for a trained CS workforce has compelled industry and academia to evaluate strategies for broadening participation in CS. The current literature in CS education emphasizes the…

Research has repeatedly shown self-efficacy to be associated with course outcomes in CS and across other fields. CS education research has documented this and has developed CS-specific self-efficacy measurement instruments, but to date there have been only a few studies examining interventions intended to improve students' self-efficacy in CS, and…

Objectives: The goal of this paper is to introduce and describe a new introductory computer science course. Research results from the implementation of this curriculum will be presented to demonstrate the nature of teachers' experiences with the curriculum. Participants: Participants are teachers implementing the new curriculum at two schools in…

We present a psychometric evaluation of a revised version of the "Cybersecurity Concept Inventory" ("CCI"), completed by 354 students from 29 colleges and universities. The CCI is a conceptual test of understanding created to enable research on instruction quality in cybersecurity education. This work extends previous expert…

Programming skills are increasingly important to the current digital economy, yet these skills have long been regarded as challenging to acquire. A central challenge in learning programming skills involves the simultaneous use of multiple component skills. This article investigates why students struggle with integrating component skills--a…

Collaboration is an important aspect of computing. In a classroom setting, working with others can increase a student's motivation to attempt more challenges, reduce the difficulty of complicated concepts, and bring about greater overall success. Despite extensive research in other domains, there has been minimal exploration within computing on…

We investigate conditions in which novices make some reference errors when programming. We asked students from introductory programming courses to perform a simple code-writing task that required constructing references to objects and their attributes. By experimentally manipulating the nature of the attributes in the tasks, from identifying…

Objectives: The increasing demand for computing skills has led to a rapid rise in the development of new computer science (CS) curricula, many with the goal of equitably broadening the participation of underrepresented students in CS. While such initiatives are vital, factors outside of the school environment also play a role in influencing…