This study investigated the computational thinking (CT) practices of eight pre-service teachers through their Scratch and Python programs. Conducted within an undergraduate-level computer science education course, students learned CT concepts via parallel instruction in block-based programming (Scratch) and text-based programming (Python). The…

Although there is wide rhetoric that programming should be learnt by all as an element of computational thinking (CT), in practice, it is mostly implemented narrowly as an end in itself consisting of routine practice and traditional testing of the ability to code. This paper discusses a way in which programming could be seen through a wider…

Serious games seem to be a promising alternative to traditional practices for learning. Recently, their use in computer science education and learning programming became more widespread. Actually, many students in programming courses have difficulties to master all required competencies and skills especially at introductory level and games have…

The popular press is rife with examples of how students in the United States and around the globe are learning to program, make, and tinker. The Hour of Code, maker-education, and similar efforts are advocating that more students be exposed to principles found within computer science. We propose an expansion beyond simply teaching computational…

The field of Web development has evolved and diversified significantly in recent years, and narrowing the gap between the requirements of academia and the demands of industry remains a challenge. Moreover, many faculty members often struggle with knowing "how much" of a particular subject they should teach to their students and at what…

Agile software development is an iterative and incremental methodology, where solutions evolve from self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Pair programming is a type of agile software development technique where two programmers work together with one computer for developing software. This paper reports the results of the pair programming…

The topics of computer architecture are always taught using an Assembly dialect as an example. The most commonly used textbooks in this field use the MIPS64 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) to help students in learning the fundamentals of computer architecture because of its orthogonality and its suitability for real-world applications. This…

This paper describes a course in programmable logic design and computer architecture as it is taught at the University of Newcastle, Australia. The course is designed around a major design project and has two supplemental assessment tasks that are also described. The context of the Computer Engineering degree program within which the course is…

Modern robots, like today's smartphones, are complex devices with intricate software systems. Introductory robot programming courses must evolve to reflect this reality, by teaching students to make use of the sophisticated tools their robots provide rather than reimplementing basic algorithms. This paper focuses on teaching with Tekkotsu, an open…

Anecdotal evidence shows that in computer programming courses plagiarism is a widespread problem. With the growing number of students in such courses, manual plagiarism detection is impractical. This requires instructors to use one of the many available plagiarism detection tools. Prior to choosing one of such tools, a metric that assures the…

Carefully engineered playable games can serve as vehicles for students and practitioners to learn and explore the programming of advanced computer architectures to execute applications, such as high performance computing (HPC) and complex, inter-networked, distributed systems. The article presents families of playable games that are grounded in…

The residue number system (RNS) has been an important research field in computer arithmetic for many decades, mainly because of its carry-free nature, which can provide high-performance computing architectures with superior delay specifications. Recently, research on RNS has found new directions that have resulted in the introduction of efficient…

This article presents the design and development of i*CATch, a construction kit for physical and wearable computing that was designed to be scalable, plug-and-play, and to provide support for iterative and exploratory learning. It consists of a standardized construction interface that can be adapted for a wide range of soft textiles or electronic…

Tangible programming tools enable children to easily learn the programming process, previously considered to be difficult for them. While various tangible programming tools have been developed, there is still a lack of available tools to help students experience the general programming process. This study therefore developed a tool called…

Models in Software Engineering are considered as abstract representations of software systems. Models highlight relevant details for a certain purpose, whereas irrelevant ones are hidden. Models are supposed to make system comprehension easier by reducing complexity. Therefore, models should play a key role in education, since they would ease the…