Design patterns for learning are about articulating, testing and sharing the principles of problem solving in the educational context. In this way, multiple patterns are developed to solve common problems, described in various pattern language formats. Therefore, this work is about characterizing and establishing functional relationships between…

Prior studies in the Computer Science education literature have illustrated that novices make many mistakes in composing SQL queries. Query formulation proves to be difficult for students. Only recently, some headway was made towards understanding why SQL leads to so many mistakes, by uncovering student misconceptions. In this article, we shed new…

Background: With the development of computational literacy, there has been a surge in both research and practice application of text-based and block-based modalities within the field of computer programming education. Despite this trend, little work has actually examined how learners engaging in programming process when utilizing these two major…

In Computer Science (CS) education, understanding factors contributing to students' programming difficulties is crucial for effective learning support. By identifying specific issues students face, educators can provide targeted assistance to help them overcome obstacles and improve learning outcomes. While identifying sources of struggle, such as…

Background and Context: We explore the potential for understanding the processes involved in students' programming based on studying their behaviour and dialogue with each other and "conversations" with their programs. Objective: Our aim is to explore how a perspective of inquiry can be used as a point of departure for insights into how…

Code quality is a critical aspect of programming, as high-quality code is easier to maintain, and code maintenance constitutes the majority of software costs. Consequently, code quality should be emphasized in programming education. While previous research has identified numerous code quality defects commonly made by students, the current state…

Programming skills are increasingly important to the current digital economy, yet these skills have long been regarded as challenging to acquire. A central challenge in learning programming skills involves the simultaneous use of multiple component skills. This article investigates why students struggle with integrating component skills--a…

This study investigated common student errors and underlying difficulties of two groups of Chinese middle school students in an introductory Python programming course using data in the automated assessment tool (AAT) Mulberry. One group of students was from a typical middle school while the other group was from a high-ability middle school. By…

"Stochastic programs," which are programs that produce probabilistic output, are a pivotal paradigm in various areas of CS education from introductory programming to machine learning and data science. Despite their importance, the problem of automatically grading such programs remains surprisingly unexplored. In this paper, we formalize…

Background and Context: Gender research shows that women are better at reading comprehension. Other studies indicate a lower tendency in women to choose STEM professions. Since data modeling requires reading skills and also belongs in the areas of information systems and computer science (STEM professions), these findings provoked our curiosity.…

The value of an instructor is that she exactly recognizes what the learner is struggling with and provides constructive feedback straight to the point. This work aims at a step towards this type of feedback in the context of an introductory programming course, where students perform program execution tracing to align their understanding of Java…

Theories on learning show that formative feedback that is immediate, specific, corrective, and positive is essential to improve novice students' motivation and learning. However, most prior work on programming feedback focuses on highlighting student's mistakes, or detecting failed test cases after they submit a solution. In this article, we…

In this paper the "Memory Transfer Language" program visualization (MTL PV) technique is combined with "constructivism" ("conceptual contraposition and colloquy") and "reversibility" to evolve a new approach for instructional design for teaching and learning introductory programming. A sample of 1,364…

SQL query writing is a challenging task for novices, even after considerable training. Query writing is a programming task and a translation task where the writer must translate a user's request for information into code that conforms to the structure, constraints, and syntax of an SQL SELECT statement and that references specific tables and…

The types of programming errors that novice programmers make and struggle to resolve have long been of interest to researchers. Various past studies have analyzed the frequency of compiler diagnostic messages. This information, however, does not have a direct correlation to the types of errors students make, due to the inaccuracy and imprecision…