The need for methods, techniques and approaches that we can develop high-level thinking skills in important activities increases day by day in order to achieve effective use of technology and change in information and communication technologies. In particular, the diversity, complexity of technical skills and to gain technical skills required to…

Driven by our technologically advanced workplaces and the surge in demand for proficiency in the computing disciplines, it is becoming imperative to provide computational thinking (CT) opportunities to all students. One approach for making computing accessible and relevant to learning and problem-solving in K-12 environments is to integrate it…

Recent educational policies advocate a radical revision of science curricula and pedagogy, to support interdisciplinary practices, a distinguishing feature of contemporary science. Computational modeling (CM) is a core methodology of interdisciplinary science, as such models allow intertwining of data and theoretical perspectives from multiple…

Background: Conceptual models are an essential phase in software design, but they can create confusion and reduced performance for students in Database Design courses. Objective: A novel Relational Data Model Validation Tool (MVTool) was developed and tested to determine (1) if students who use MVTool perform better than those who do not, and (2)…

Students learn many concepts in the introductory statistics course, but even our most successful students end up with rigid, ritualized knowledge that does not transfer easily to new situations. In this article we describe our attempt to apply theories and findings from learning science to the design of a statistics course that aims to help…

The assessment of program functionality can generally be accomplished with straight-forward unit tests. However, assessing the design quality of a program is a much more difficult and nuanced problem. Design quality is an important consideration since it affects the readability and maintainability of programs. Assessing design quality and giving…

In this digital ITEMS module, Dr. Jeffrey Harring and Ms. Tessa Johnson introduce the linear mixed effects (LME) model as a flexible general framework for simultaneously modeling continuous repeated measures data with a scientifically defensible function that adequately summarizes both individual change as well as the average response. The module…

Studies of scientific practice demonstrate that the development of scientific models is an enactive and emergent process (e.g., Pickering 1995; Chandrasekharan and Nersessian 2017). Scientists make meaning through processes such as perspective taking, finding patterns, and following intuitions. In this paper, we focus on how a group of fourth…

This article looks at the social and cultural contexts of children's experiences of illness, through a particular focus on the context of the Global South and the role of the social media platform YouTube in children's culture. It takes a socio-constructivist approach to discuss the case of "CarecaTV" (BaldTV), a Brazilian YouTube…

Researchers in many disciplines work with ranking data. This data type is unique in that it is often deterministic in nature (the ranks of items "k"-1 determine the rank of item "k"), and the difference in a pair of rank scores separated by "k" units is equivalent regardless of the actual values of the two ranks in…

The flipped classroom gives students the flexibility to organize their learning, while teachers can monitor their progress analyzing their online activity. In massive courses where there are a variety of activities, automated analysis techniques are required in order to process the large volume of information that is generated, to help teachers…

Data analytics is undergoing an evolution through effective data use to support both operational and learning analytics models. However, this evolution will require that institutional leaders transform their data systems to best support the needs of application modeling and use their intuition to help drive the development of better analytical…

Colleges are increasingly offering online courses, including computer programming courses for business school students. Programming languages that are most useful to students are those that are widely used in the job market. However, the most popular computer languages change at least every three years. Therefore, the language used for instruction…

Herein, we present an experience-based learning approach that uses the COVID-19 pandemics knowledge about virus spread and epidemics to establish an analogy between a simple epidemics model--the SIR model (susceptible--infected--removed), and a second-order autocatalytic reaction with subsequent catalyst deactivation. Our approach provides a…

Computational thinking (CT) and modeling are authentic practices that scientists and engineers use frequently in their daily work. Advances in computing technologies have further emphasized the centrality of modeling in science by making computationally enabled model use and construction more accessible to scientists. As such, it is important for…