Background and Context: Auto-graders are praised by novice students learning to program, as they provide them with automatic feedback about their problem-solving process. However, some students often make random changes when they have errors in their code, without engaging in deliberate thinking about the cause of the error. Objective: To…

Background and Context: Computer Science has traditionally had poor student retention, especially among women. Prior work has found that student attitudes are a key factor to retention, especially with "weedout" courses such as Calculus. Objective: To determine how student attitudes towards CS 1 and Calculus change over active-learning…

Background and Context: Lopez and Lister first presented evidence for a skill hierarchy of code reading, tracing, and writing for introductory programming students. Further support for this hierarchy could help computer science educators sequence course content to best build student programming skill. Objective: This study aims to replicate a…

Background and Context: Considerable numbers of Computer science (CS) undergraduate majors struggle in Theory of Computation (ToC) courses, which strengthen bimodality beliefs of student performance. Reasons for students struggling are assumed to be manifold but substantial ground is based on studies providing singular insights into this matter.…

Background and Context: Women are severely underrepresented in computer science (CS). Understanding varied entry points into CS may promote women's participation in the field. Objective: This study identifies experiences that influenced women's matriculation into CS majors, and pathways into CS based on participants' enrollment in bachelor of arts…

Background: Despite ongoing calls for prioritizing K-12 computer science (CS) education, an enduring gender gap exists. Objective: We explored one high school CS program where female participation was consistently higher than state averages to better understand how the program was developed. Method: Using a case study method, data were collected…

Background and Context: While assessment of computational thinking concepts, practices, and perspectives is at the forefront of K-12 CS education, supporting student "communication about computation" has received relatively little attention. Objective: To examine the usability of process-based portfolios for capturing students'…

Background and Context: The relationship between novices' first programming language and their future achievement has drawn increasing interest owing to recent efforts to expand K-12 computing education. This article contributes to this topic by analyzing data from a retrospective study of more than 10,000 undergraduates enrolled in introductory…

Background and Context: Current introductory instruction fails to identify, structure, and sequence the many skills involved in programming. Objective: We proposed a theory which identifies four distinct skills that novices learn incrementally. These skills are tracing, writing syntax, comprehending templates (reusable abstractions of programming…

Background and Context: Computer Science attrition rates (in the western world) are very concerning, with a large number of students failing to progress each year. It is well acknowledged that a significant factor of this attrition, is the students' difficulty to master the introductory programming module, often referred to as CS1. Objective: The…

Background and Context: Flipped classrooms are becoming more widely adopted across engineering higher education contexts. In degree programs where enrollment is increasing and undergraduate curricula are packed with content, pedagogies that allow more time for actively participate in classroom activities are being highly sought after to aid in…

In higher education, quality feedback for students is regarded as one of the main contributors to improve student learning. Feedback to support students' development into self-regulated learners, who set their own goals, self-monitor their actual performance according to these goals, and adjust learning strategies if necessary, is seen as an…

We report on the development, validation, and implementation of a collection of test items designed to detect misconceptions related to first-year computer science courses. To this end, we reworked the development scheme proposed by Almstrum et al. ("SIGCSE Bulletin" 38(4):132-145, 2006) to include students' artifacts and to…

Computer aided assessment systems enable the collection of exact time and date information on students' activity on a course. These activity patterns reflect students' study habits and these study habits further predict students' likelihood to pass or fail a course. By identifying such patterns, those who design the courses can enforce positive…

The focus of this research was to create and test an introductory computer science course for middle school. Titled "Foundations for Advancing Computational Thinking" (FACT), the course aims to prepare and motivate middle school learners for future engagement with algorithmic problem solving. FACT was also piloted as a seven-week course…