Hour of Code is a widely recognized global event that aims to introduce programming to novice users and integrate computer science into education. This paper presents an analysis of the effectiveness of the support system and user interface of Minecraft Adventurer, a serious game designed for the Hour of Code global event. Although previous…

Augmented Reality (AR) is believed a suitable teaching method for beginning-level Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners in learning Chinese characters, as the effects of AR on visualization may enhance recognition of pictographic characters and the integration of multimedia may facilitate comprehension of this logographic language. Yet the…

Learning analytics (LA) is a significant field of study to examine and identify difficulties the novice programmers face while learning how to program. Despite producing notable research by the community in the specified area, rare work is observed to synthesize these research efforts and discover the dimensions that guide the future research of…

It is widely recognized that debugging is challenging for novice programmers and, as such, computing educators and researchers have called for explicit debugging instruction. Debugging requires various knowledge and skills, and different students may show different strengths and weaknesses. An understanding of such individual differences is…

Game based-learning have been widely promoted to overcome the difficulties encountered by beginners to learn programming. However, there are many issues to address for the implementation of game-based learning. Indeed, game-based learning is not limited to adding game elements such as rewards to a learning situation, but it rather consists of…

Regarding the caliber of newly-graduated professionals, the software industry expresses discontent. Therefore, software industries spend on training these individuals to improve software development process-related skills. According to various research studies, one reason for the lack of skilled graduates is a gap between industry and academia.…

Computational thinking is an important competence for learners in the twenty-first century. As an effective approach for cultivating competence in computational thinking, programming education has been extended from college to elementary school teaching. However, it is challenging to engage beginners in programming in elementary school education.…

Research so far has overlooked the contribution of students' noncognitive factors to their performance in introductory programming in the context of personalized learning support. This study uses learning analytics to design and implement a Dashboard to understand the contribution of introductory programming students' learning motivation,…

Recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI), seen as an engineering domain, has been introduced into school education, but its pedagogy remains unclear. In general, group learning has been applied as a primary form of instruction in hands-on engineering activities. This learning approach is more common in higher education. School students are less…

This paper designs and develops a computer programming learning system for total beginners and those who have no programming experience. The traditional computer programming learning systems require prior knowledge about variables, their types, operators for arithmetic calculations and relational calculations etc., for adopting a wide range of…

Serious games or educational games have attracted the interest of instructors and researchers for several years. In the field of education, serious games are being used for motivating students, attracting their interest in cognitively demanding fields and making the teaching and learning process more fun. Moreover, learning through implementing…

One of the aspects of programming that novices often struggle with is the understanding of abstract concepts, such as variables, loops, expressions, and especially Boolean operations. This paper aims to explore the effects of programming tools with different degrees of embodiment on learning Boolean operations in elementary school. To this end, 67…

Several instructional approaches have been advanced for learning programming. However, effective ways of engaging beginners in programming in K-12 are still unclear, especially among low socioeconomic status learners in technology-deprived learning environments. Understanding the learning path of novice programmers will bridge this gap and explain…

In this study, we gauge the perceptions of novice computer programmers about Second Life (SL) as a digital learning environment for concept understanding in computer programming. SL is chosen as the learning environment because it offers, within a constructivist frame, the use of learner-centered pedagogies for designing curriculum. We adopt a…

Python is gaining popularity in academia as the preferred language to teach novices serial programming. The syntax of Python is clean, easy, and simple to understand. At the same time, it is a high-level programming language that supports multi programming paradigms such as imperative, functional, and object-oriented. Therefore, by default, it is…