Learning programming has become increasingly popular, with learners from diverse backgrounds and experiences requiring different support. Programming-process analysis helps to identify solver types and needs for assistance. The study examined students' behavior patterns in programming among beginners and non-beginners to identify solver types,…

The principles of programming language design for learning and teaching have been described and discussed for several decades. Most influential was the work of Niklaus Wirth, describing principles such as simplicity, modularity, orthogonality, and readability. So why is this still an area of fundamental disagreement among educators? Why can…

In programming problem solving activities, sometimes, students need feedback to progress in the course, being positively affected by the received feedback. This paper presents an overview of the state of the art and practice of the feedback approaches on introductory programming. To this end, we have carried out a systematic literature mapping to…

This autoethnographic paper is part of a special issue trying to answer the question "How to design or choose languages for programming novices?" I will describe how my programming language Hedy was created, how the initial design goals were formed, how my perspectives on learning and teaching changed along the way, and how Hedy changed…

Prior programming knowledge of students has a major impact on introductory programming courses. Those with prior experience often seem to breeze through the course. Those without prior experience see others breeze through the course and disengage from the material or drop out. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that novice student…

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…

The notion of algorithm may be perceived in different levels of abstraction. In the lower levels it is an operational set of instructions. In higher levels it may be viewed as an object with properties, solving a problem with characteristics. Novices mostly relate to the lower levels. Yet, higher levels are very relevant for them as well. We…

Coding and computational thinking have recently become compulsory skills in many school systems globally. Teaching these new skills presents a challenge for many teachers. A notable example of professional development designed using Constructionist principles to address this challenge is "ScratchEd". Upon reflecting on her experiences…

This longitudinal study investigates the impact of an extra-curricular programming workshop in student interest development in computer science. The workshop was targeted at 12-18-year old youngsters. A survey was sent to all previous participants with a known home address; 31.5% responded the survey (n = 197). This data was then combined with…

Problem solving skills are considered an important component in learning to program in an introductory programming (IP) course for novices. This study introduced a PROSOLVE game to enhance problem solving skills of novice programmers in the introductory programming course. The game is based on pseudo-code technique. A survey was employed to…

The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web where information is represented in a machine processable way. It is not separate from the current Web and one of the confusions that novice users might have is where the Semantic Web is. In fact, users can easily encounter RDF documents that are components of the Semantic Web while they navigate…

Research on the effectiveness of introductory programming environments often relies on post-test measures and attitudinal surveys to support its claims; but such instruments lack the ability to identify any explanatory mechanisms that can account for the results. This paper reports on a study designed to address this issue. Using Noss and Hoyles'…

In this paper, we analyze the errors novice students make when developing invariant based programs. In addition to presenting the general error types, we also look at what students have difficulty with when it comes to expressing invariants. The results indicate that an introductory course utilizing the invariant based approach is suitable from…

Informatics is currently being taught in high schools all over the world. In the Dutch curriculum, computer literacy is taught in the lower grades as a compulsory subject, Informatics is taught as an elective in the higher grades of some schools. As a follow-up to the outline of Grgurina and Tolboom (2008), the discussion about the future of…